Multibody System Dynamics 8: 219239, 2002. 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

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Kinematic Data Consistency in the Inverse Dynamic Analysis of Biomechanical Systems

M.P.T. SILVA and J.A.C. AMBRSIO
IDMEC-Instituto de Engenharia Mecnica, Instituto Superior Tcnico, Avenida Rovisco Pais, 1, P-1049-001 Lisboa, Portugal (Received: 4 May 2001; accepted in revised form: 14 September 2001) Abstract. Inverse dynamic analysis is used in the study of human gait to evaluate the reaction forces transmitted between adjacent anatomical segments and to calculate the net moments-of-force that result from the muscle activity about each biomechanical joint. The quality of the results, in terms of reaction and muscle forces, is greatly affected not only by the choice of biomechanical model but also by the kinematic data provided as input. This three-dimensional data is obtained through the reconstruction of the measured human motion. A biomechanical model is developed representing human body components with a collection of rigid bodies interconnected by kinematic joints. The data processing, leading to the spatial reconstruction of the anatomical point coordinates, uses ltering techniques to eliminate the high frequency components arising from the digitization process. The trajectory curves, describing the positions of the anatomical points are obtained using a form of polynomial interpolation, generally cubic splines. The velocities and accelerations are then the polynomial derivatives. This procedure alone does not ensure that the kinematic data is consistent with the biomechanical model adopted, because the underlying kinematic constraint equations are not necessarily satised. In the present work, the reconstructed spatial positions of the anatomical points are corrected by ensuring that the kinematic constraints of the biomechanical model are not violated. The velocity and acceleration equations of the biomechanical model are then calculated as the rst and second time derivatives of the constraint equations. The solution to these equations provides the model with kinematically consistent velocities and accelerations. The procedures are demonstrated through the application to a normal cadence stride period and the results discussed with respect to the underlying principles of the techniques used. Key words: biomechanical model, kinematically consistent data, inverse dynamics, data ltering, motion reconstruction, natural coordinates.

1. Introduction The evaluation of the muscular actions and internal forces at the human body articular joints is of major importance in different areas of medicine, sports, physical rehabilitation or biomedical engineering. However, there are no experimental methodologies that can measure these forces directly. Therefore, the human motion studies rely on mathematical and computational models in general, and multibody biomechanical models in particular, to evaluate the intersegmentar reaction forces

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as well as the muscle forces and their net moments-of-force about the anatomical joints without external interference on the motion of the subject of the analysis. The construction of a supporting biomechanical model requires knowledge of its important functions and identication of the experimental or numerical data required as input and the system dynamics response that is to be reported [1]. Furthermore, their application in the context of inverse dynamic analysis requires that the kinematics of the human motion, i.e., the position, velocities and accelerations of the anatomical points, is known in advance. This data set is generally obtained by standard reconstruction methods based on the Direct Linear Transformation technique (DLT) [2]. The biomechanical multibody models used in the inverse dynamics procedure are developed using any of the multibody formulations available [3]. The most common procedures use classical dynamic approaches to obtain the reaction forces and the moments-of-force at the joints by formulating and solving the dynamic equilibrium equations of each anatomical segment of the human body, starting from the segments further away from the torso and moving inwards along the kinematic chain under analysis. The unknown forces and moments at each segment are used, after being calculated, as external applied forces to the preceding segment in the kinematic chain [4]. Alternatively, the general multibody dynamic formulations assemble and solve, in a systematic way, the complete set of the equations of motion of the system, for each time step. These models are general and allow for their use in different motion scenarios, even those that include kinematical loop closures, for instance when the hands grip a golf club or a steering wheel. The biomechanical model used in this work for gait analysis was proposed by Celigeta [5] and by Silva et al. [6]. The model has 33 rigid bodies connected by 32 kinematic joints representing 16 anatomical segments. The muscle action may be obtained by having each particular group of muscles, dened as those with similar functions and common anatomical insertions, modeled independently and included in the biomechanical model [7]. This leads to an indeterminate problem, in terms of the unknown forces, that can be solved using optimization theory [8]. Alternatively, the actions of the different muscle groups can be lumped as moments about anatomical joints leading to a determinate inverse dynamics problem [9]. It can be shown that the problem of force sharing by the muscles can be viewed as an optimal problem where some of the constraints simply impose that the muscle net moments-of-force about any given joint must be equal to those obtained in the determinate inverse dynamic analysis. This procedure is generally referred to as static optimization [10]. Therefore, the correct evaluation of the net moments-of-force obtained in the inverse dynamic analysis procedure is fundamental, regardless of the methodology used to evaluate the muscle and anatomical joints reaction forces. The kinematic data required for the inverse dynamic analysis of the biomechanical model needs the trajectories of 23 anatomical points, located at the anatomical joints and segments extremities, which are obtained by using the DLT procedure

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[2]. The ground reaction forces must be acquired with force platforms synchronized with the cameras [11]. Both of these acquisition processes are prone to errors due to signal noise, operator imprecision or nite precision of the equipment. Therefore, the experimentally acquired data must be ltered before it can be used in the inverse dynamic analysis. Different ltering methods can be used in the experimental data ltering, for noise reduction. Among these, the Butterworth second order lters [12] and the Fourier series with optimal regularization [13] are the most commonly used. The selection of the best lter for each type of application is a question not completely settled [14]. Taking into account that the applications foreseen in the present work aim to gait analysis, which is characterized by a certain noise level in the points trajectories and force platform data, is used the second order Butterworth lter with the zero phase-shift technique and cut-off frequencies on the range of 28 Hz [12]. Either because the acquisition of the kinematic data is generally done independently of the biomechanical model effectively used or due to the ltering procedure, the processed kinematic data does not ensure that the kinematic constraints associated to the biomechanical model are fullled. The inverse dynamic analysis also requires that the system velocities and accelerations are known. A common process to obtain those involves the use a polynomial interpolation of the coordinates and its time derivatives. This procedure does not ensure that the constraint velocity and acceleration equations are fullled, even if the position data is kinematically consistent. Consequently, spurious joints reaction forces and net moments-of-force, associated to the constraint violations, are generated in the solution of the inverse dynamic problem [15]. To ensure the consistency of the kinematic data with the constraints of the biomechanical model it is proposed here that the kinematic positions are modied in order to fulll the constraint equations. Furthermore, the velocity and acceleration of the system are obtained by using the velocity and acceleration equations, respectively. The proposed methodology is applied to the analysis of human gait with a normal cadence in order to obtain the intersegmentar forces and the muscle net moments-of-force. The need and implications of the use of the ltering procedures and the enforcement of the kinematic data consistency are discussed in the process.

2. Input Data Conditioning Inverse dynamic analysis of a mechanical system requires, the knowledge of its motion and all external applied forces. The motion of the system is described by the kinematic information necessary to dene the position and orientation of each anatomical component during the analysis period. The external applied forces, obtained using force plates, provide all information necessary for the construction of the system force vector.

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Figure 1. Set of anatomical points.

Figure 2. Overall apparatus of the gait lab.

The motion of the system consists of the trajectory of a set of anatomical points located at the joints and extremities of the subject under analysis, as depicted in Figure 1. In the present work, these curves are obtained through a digitization process in which the images collected by four video cameras are used to reconstruct the three-dimensional coordinates of the anatomical points. This reconstruction process uses DLT [2, 16] to convert the two-dimensional coordinates of the video images into three-dimensional Cartesian coordinates. The motion reconstruction process, by nature, introduces high frequency noise into the trajectory curves of the reconstructed anatomical points. This noise occurs due to several factors such as digitalization errors and the nite resolution of the two-dimensional images. In order to make these trajectories suitable for use in the inverse dynamic analysis, a ltering procedure is applied with the objective of reducing the noise levels. A Butterworth second order, low-pass lter [12, 17], with the zero phase shift technique is applied with properly chosen cut-off frequencies, reducing the noise levels and smoothing the trajectory curves.

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A similar ltering procedure is applied to the external applied forces, in order to reduce the noise levels introduced during the acquisition process. The external forces are measured using force plates that convert an analog electric signal into a digital signal. The noise introduced in the external force measurement is associated with factors such as the cross talk between force plates and the conversion from an analog to a digital signal. In the present work three force plates are used in the measurement of the ground reaction forces. In Figure 2, the apparatus of the gait lab, with the three force plates and the four video cameras, is presented. The use of four video cameras not only improves the chances for the anatomical points to be visible all time in at least one of the cameras, but also provides an extra set of equations for the DLT method. The ground reaction forces are obtained independently for each foot during the trial. In order to reduce the noise levels in the external force curves and center-ofpressure curves, the Butterworth second order low pass lter is once again applied with cut-off frequencies ranging from 1020 Hz for the forces and 35 Hz for the center-of-pressure curves. The choice for the correct cut-off frequency is based on a residual analysis [12].

3. Biomechanical Model Description A whole body response biomechanical model of the human body is used in the inverse dynamic analysis of the stride period. This model is dened using 33 rigid bodies. The rigid bodies are connected by revolute and universal joints in such a way that 16 major anatomical segments can be identied. A description of the 16 anatomical segments and their corresponding rigid bodies is presented in Table I. Figure 3 illustrates the 16 anatomical segments and the underlying kinematic structure of rigid bodies and kinematic joints. Considering this kinematic structure, an open loop topology can be identied, with a base body described by rigid body number 7, and ve kinematic branches dened by the four limbs and the head/neck. The model has 44 degrees-of-freedom that correspond to 38 rotations about 26 revolute joints and six universal joints, plus six degrees-of-freedom that are associated with the free body rotations and translations of the base body. Revolute joints in this model are dened in two different ways, as depicted in Figure 4, for the example case of the elbow joint. The revolute joints between two adjacent anatomical segments are dened using an anatomical point and a joint direction unit vector that are shared by the adjacent rigid bodies. When describing the axial rotation within an anatomical segment, revolute joints are dened using two anatomical points that are shared by two different rigid bodies of the same anatomical segment. This is a general-purpose biomechanical model that can be applied to kinematic analysis, inverse dynamic analysis or forward dynamic analysis. Due to the kinematic structure, where no spherical joints are used, it is in inverse dynamic applications that the model presents most advantages. In this type of applications,

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Figure 3. (a) The 16 anatomical segments; (b) The kinematic structure of rigid bodies.

Table I. Anatomical segments description with the topology of rigid bodies. Segment No. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 Description Lower torso Upper torso Head Right upper arm Right lower arm Left upper arm Left lower arm Right upper leg Right lower leg Left upper leg Left lower leg Neck Right hand Left hand Right foot Left foot Rigid body index 6, 7, 8 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25 33 17, 18 15, 16 26, 27 28, 29 4, 5 2, 3 9, 10 11, 12 31, 32 14 30 1 13

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Figure 4. (a) Kinematic structure of the elbow joint, with (b) revolute joint I dened using one point and one direction unit vector and (c) revolute joint II dened using two points.

Figure 5. The anthropometric dimensions.

the direction in which a torque is applied must be known in advance. Therefore, the use of spherical joints is not an option because they do not have xed direction unit vectors about which the relative rotations occur. In order to correctly represent the physical characteristics of the human body, the principal physical properties of each anatomical segment must be specied. The principal properties associated with each anatomical segment are mass, principal moments of inertia, anthropometric segment length and the distance of its center of mass from the proximal joint. The properties used in the denition of the 16 anatomical segments were obtained in the literature [12, 18]. In this model, several rigid bodies describe an anatomical segment. The physical properties of these rigid bodies are calculated such that they add up to the properties of the anatomical

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Table II. Physical characteristics of anatomical segments and rigid bodies for the 50th-percentile human male. Note that the center of mass locations refer to the proximal joint.

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segment that they represent. In Table II, the physical properties of the anatomical segments and rigid bodies are presented for the 50th-percentile human male. The lengths, indicated in this table and referred to as Li , Li , di and d i , are schematically represented in Figure 5. 4. Formulation Using Natural Coordinates 4.1. TYPE OF COORDINATES In the present work, the inverse dynamic analysis of the stride period is performed using a multibody approach with natural Cartesian coordinates, also called fully Cartesian coordinates [6, 19]. Using this formulation, the position and orientation of a rigid body in the global reference frame are dened using the Cartesian coordinates of a set of basic points and direction unit vectors. This type of coordinates is convenient for use in inverse dynamic analyses since the coordinates of the digitized points, can be used directly in the denition of the anatomical segments of the biomechanical model. These coordinates also hold the necessary information for the calculation of the joint rotation vectors, which are required in the denition of the rigid bodies of the model. 4.2. KINEMATIC CONSTRAINTS Using this methodology, with points and vectors dening the position and orientation of rigid bodies, the most common type of kinematic constraints that arise are rigid body constraints. Rigid body constraints are used to dene the rigid body properties, i.e., to maintain constant distances between pairs of points on a rigid body, constant angles between pairs of unit vectors, or between two-point segments and unit vectors. These physical relations are expressed mathematically by the same constraint equation. The scalar product equation is used in this formulation to dene in a unied way most of the rigid body constraints, as well as joint and driver constraints, as
(SP ,1)

(q, t) = vT u L Lu cos( v, u (t)) = 0,

(1)

where v and u are two generic vectors used in the denition of rigid bodies, L and Lu are the respective norms and v, u (t) is the angle between them. In the case of revolute driving constraints, used to prescribe the motion of the system over time, these angles are functions of time. Depending on vectors v and u, Equation (1) has different physical meanings. Considering that ri , rj , rk and rl are the Cartesian coordinates of points i, j, k and l and a and b are direction unit vectors, then the most relevant kinematic constraints involving the scalar product and their respective physical meanings are presented in Table III. Considering that this constraint is quadratic in the coordinates, its contribution to the Jacobian matrix

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Table III. Physical meanings of the scalar product constraint.

Figure 6. Kinematic structure of a rigid body dened with three points and one unit vector.

of the constraints is linear [19]. This feature makes the evaluation of this matrix computationally efcient. This kinematic constraint is extensively applied in the denition of the rigid bodies of the present biomechanical model. Considering the kinematic structure presented in Figure 3b, only this type of kinematic constraint is applied to the construction of the two types of rigid bodies used, i.e., on rigid bodies dened with three anatomical points and one direction unit vector and rigid bodies dened with two anatomical points and one direction unit vector. For example, rigid body number 33, corresponding to the head, is dened using 12 natural coordinates associated with three anatomical points and one direction unit vector, as depicted

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Figure 7. Denition of a universal joint.

in Figure 6. Taking into account that a rigid body has a maximum number of six degrees-of-freedom, then six kinematic constraint equations need to be added to the global constraint vector of the biomechanical model. These constraint equations are respectively the constant length constraint between points i and j and between points i and k, the constant angle constraint between segments rij and rik , the unit module constraint for vector u and the constant angle constraints between vector u and segments rij and rik . The second type of rigid body has a simpler kinematic structure, as seen in Figure 4 for the rigid bodies dening of the upper limb. With nine natural coordinates used in its denition, this rigid body only requires the introduction of three scalarproduct constraint equations. The constraint equations are respectively a constant distance constraint between the two basic points, the unit module constraint of the direction unit vector and the constant angle constraint between the direction unit vector and the two-point segment. The motion of the system is dened using a set of 38 rotational driver constraint equations, of scalar-product type, that are associated with each degree-offreedom of the model. These rotational drivers enforce that the degrees-of-freedom of the anatomical joints follow the prescribed motion of the intersegmental angles, dened from the spatial motion reconstruction.

4.3. KINEMATIC JOINT DEFINITION The denition of kinematic joints is greatly simplied when using natural coordinates. Kinematic joints such as spherical and revolute joints appear in a natural way by sharing points and vectors by more than one rigid body, without the need of introducing any extra kinematic constraint equations. These characteristics have the advantage of reducing the total number of kinematic constraint equations of the system and the disadvantage of requiring extra computational effort in the calculation of the joint reaction forces. The universal joint, also used in the kinematic structure of the biomechanical model, has a more complex implementation. This joint, represented in Figure 7, requires the introduction of one extra scalar product constraint equation, in addi-

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tion to the sharing of one point by two adjacent rigid bodies. This extra constraint equation is used to maintain the two unit vectors, each one belonging to a different rigid body, perpendicular between each other. 4.4. EQUATIONS OF MOTION The equations of motion for a general multibody system, with relative motion between rigid bodies constrained by kinematic pairs and acted upon by external applied forces, are given by [1922] Mq +
T q

= g,

(2)

where q is the generalized acceleration vector, M is the system global mass matrix, g is the generalized external force vector, is the Lagrange multipliers vector associated with the kinematic constraints and is the Jacobian matrix of the constraints. There are several ways to dene rigid bodies in a three-dimensional space using natural coordinates. A rigid body may be dened using two points and one unit vector, two points and two unit vectors, three points and one unit vector and so forth depending on the type of mechanism being modeled. The biomechanical model used throughout this work uses rigid bodies dened by three points and one unit vector and rigid bodies dened by two points and one unit vector. In either case, the mass matrix of each rigid body is given by Mi = VT Me V, (3)

where the index i represents the rigid body number, V is a transformation matrix that depends on the type of rigid body used and Me is the elementary mass matrix of the rigid body dened with two points and two non-coplanar unit vectors [19]. Let the elementary mass matrix associated with a rigid body dened by two points and two non-coplanar unit vectors be given by [20] Me = (m 2ma1 + z11 )I3 (ma1 z11 )I3 (ma2 z12 )I3 (ma3 z13 )I3 (z11 )I3 Symmetric (z12 )I3 (z22 )I3 (z13)I3 (z23)I3 (z33)I3 , (4)

where m is the mass of the rigid body, ai are the components of vector a, zij are the elements of matrix Z and I3 is a three-by-three identity matrix. Vector a and matrix Z are closely related to the rst and second moments of area of the rigid body [19]. The elementary mass matrix, given by Equation (4), is symmetric and constant. Each rigid body has a specic transformation matrix V that must be used in Equation (3) to obtain its mass matrix. For the rigid body dened by the three points

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i, j and k and the direction unit vector u, the transformation matrix is constant in time and is given by 03 03 03 I3 0 I3 03 03 3 3plv (5) = 03 V 03 03 I3 , 1 1 03 I3 I3 03 Lj k Lj k where Lj k is the length of the segment dened between points j and k and 03 is a three-by-three null matrix. For the rigid body dened using two points i and j and unit vector u, the transformation matrix is time dependent and it is written as I3 03 03 0 3 I3 03 (6) V2plv = 03 03 I3 , 1 1 1 u u rj i c c c where c = Lj i sin( rj i , u ) is the modulus of the vector dened by the cross product of segment rj i by vector u, and u and rj i are two skew-symmetric matrices made of the components of vectors u and rj i , respectively. Hence, the mass matrices for these two types of rigid bodies, in a multibody methodology using natural coordinates, are given by M3plv = (V3plv )T Me (V3plv ), M2plv = (V2plv )T Me (V2plv ). (7a) (7b)

The mass matrix of the rigid body dened by three points and one unit vector is constant in time while for the rigid body dened by two points and one unit vector the mass matrix is time dependent. The time dependency of the mass matrix given by Equation (7b) leads to velocity-dependent inertial forces that need to be added to the generalized force vector at each time step. These forces are g2plv = (V2plv )T Me (V2plv ), where V2plv is the rst time derivative of matrix V2p1v , given by 03 03 03 03 03 03 2plv = 03 03 03 , V 1 1 1 u u rj i c c c (8)

(9)

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where matrices u and rj i are the rst time derivatives of matrices u and rj i , respectively. In order to perform the inverse dynamic analysis it is assumed that the motion of the system and the external forces applied on the model are fully known. Therefore, Equation (2) is rewritten as
T q

= g Mq .

(10)

Equation (10) only has a unique solution for the unknown Lagrange multipliers when the number of kinematic constraints equals the number of coordinates of the system. Therefore, for the purpose of the inverse dynamic analysis, a set of kinematic constraints that guides the degrees-of-freedom of the biomechanical model is added to the system. These constraints enforce that the biomechanical model have the prescribed motion assumed for the system. 4.5. JOINT REACTION FORCES AND MUSCLE MOMENTS - OF - FORCE Each Lagrange multiplier is associated with a reaction force and each reaction force has a physical meaning depending of the type of kinematic constraint with which it is associated. Associated with the rigid body constraints are the internal forces within the rigid bodies that maintain the rigid body properties. The moments-offorce developed by the system motors to enforce a prescribed motion are associated with the rotational driver constraints and the intersegmental reaction forces are associated with the joint constraints. The main objective of the inverse dynamic analysis is the calculation of the reaction forces and the joint net moments-of-force. The reaction forces calculated are the intersegmentar forces occurring between anatomical segments while the moments-of-force are the net moments generated by the muscle forces around an anatomical joint. In natural coordinates there are no joint constraints associated with revolute and spherical joints, because these are dened by sharing points and vectors between rigid bodies. In order to calculate the reaction forces associated with these joints in a systematic way, an expanded mechanical system is created in which there are no shared points or vectors. In the expanded system, as illustrated in Figure 8 for the knee joint, revolute and spherical joints are dened using proper joint constraint equations that enforce, two different points or two different direction unit vectors, to have the same Cartesian coordinates, during the analysis. These joint constraint equations are linear and are written as rn rm = 0, b a = 0, (11) (12)

where rm and rn are the Cartesian coordinates of points m and n and a and b are two direction unit vectors belonging to different rigid bodies. The expanded system

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Figure 8. Denition of the knee joint: (a) original model; (b) expanded model.

uses many more coordinates and constraint equations to dene the same kinematic structure of the original biomechanical model. This makes the expanded system computationally less efcient than the original one. Consequently, the expanded system is only used when the calculation of the reaction forces at the joints is strictly necessary. For these cases, the expanded system is only assembled and solved at the time steps where reporting is necessary. 5. Calculation of a Kinematically Consistent Mechanical System A mechanical system is said to be consistent with the kinematic data when the constraint equations and their time derivatives are satised. In kinematically nonconsistent systems, spurious reaction forces are obtained, which result from violations of the constraint equations. As illustrated in Figure 9, the process of acquiring the kinematic input data leads to errors in the evaluation of the distances between anatomical points. Therefore, the input data, collected using this process, is non-consistent with the kinematic structure of the biomechanical model, producing violations in the kinematic constraints of the mechanical system. These acquisition errors in general cannot be eliminated, and are due to the limited resolution of the video image, to operator digitizing errors, to skin movement or due to the fact that anatomical joints are not perfect mechanical joints, as represented by the model.

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Figure 9. Non-constant distances between anatomical points from frame-to-frame (di2 = di1 = di ).

5.1. KINEMATICALLY CONSISTENT POSITIONS The rst step towards the construction of kinematically consistent input data is to modify the Cartesian coordinates of the anatomical points in such a way that the kinematic constraints are fullled in general and in particular that the distances between anatomical points remain constant during the analysis. The procedure to calculate the new set of points is accomplished by performing a kinematic analysis of the system positions. First, the initially non-consistent positions are used to calculate average link lengths between the anatomical points. These average lengths are used to dene the dimensions of the rigid bodies of the biomechanical model, so that the model has constant link lengths during the analysis. Alternatively, instead of using average link lengths, the effective anthropometric dimensions, obtained from direct measurements of the subject under analysis, can be used. Second, the biomechanical model is driven throughout the kinematic analysis, using the rotational driver constraint equations. The curves that express the history of the intersegmental angles, denoted by (t), are calculated from the input data and are interpolated using cubic splines. It is then possible, to evaluate the system position at any intermediate time step, even if it does not coincide with a frame acquired by the cameras. As a result, the kinematic analysis produces a new set of anatomical point positions, which are consistent with the kinematic structure of the biomechanical model. In the numerical implementation of this procedure, due to the presence of redundant constraints, the NewtonRaphson iterative scheme is used in the sense of a least-square approach. This iterative scheme has a quadratic convergence rate in the neighborhood of the solution. Using the non-consistent positions as an initial guess to the NewtonRaphson procedure, a convergent solution is obtained after three or four iterations. The expression describing the iterative method is given as (
T q q )(qi+1

qi ) = (

T q )i (

)i ,

(13)

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where q is the vector of generalized coordinates and vector. The subscript i represents the iteration index.

is the global constraint

5.2. CALCULATION OF VELOCITIES AND ACCELERATIONS A mechanical system is considered to be totally consistent if its velocities and accelerations are also consistent with the underlying kinematic structure. This means that the system velocities and accelerations must belong to the null-space of the Jacobian matrix. This is expressed as qq qq = , = , (14) (15)

where q and q are respectively the vectors of generalized velocities and accelerations of the system and and the right-hand sides of the velocity and acceleration equations [6]. Equations (14) and (15) represent a system of linear equations with the same leading matrix. The solution of Equations (14) and (15) is unique for a given position of the system and leads to the calculation of the generalized consistent velocities and accelerations. Instead of using Equations (14) and (15) to obtain the velocities and accelerations of the anatomical points, it is common to use time derivatives of the functions that interpolate the trajectories of the anatomical points. This procedure requires that the spatial positions of the anatomical points are rst interpolated, using cubic splines for example. The velocities and accelerations are obtained as the rst and second time derivatives of the cubic splines. This procedure does not require the use of the kinematic velocity and acceleration equations, and consequently, the velocities and accelerations obtained are not necessarily consistent with the biomechanical model. The velocities and accelerations obtained in this form are called non-consistent. 6. Application to a Normal Cadence Stride Period The methodologies described before are implemented in a general multibody code using natural coordinates and are applied to a case study of a normal cadence stride period. The subject is a 25 year old male, with a height of 1.70 m and 70 kg of total body mass. Using the height, average link lengths and total body mass of the subject, the physical characteristics presented in Table II for the 50th percentile human male are scaled in order to improve the biodelity of the biomechanical model. The lab apparatus used in the kinematic and force data acquisition is presented in Figure 2. Four video cameras are used to record the movement of the subject. The cameras have a sampling frequency of 60 Hz as do the three force plates used to measure the ground reaction forces. The cameras and force plate data acquisition

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Figure 10. Net moment-of-force at the ankle joint.

Figure 11. Net moment-of-force at the knee joint.

is synchronized. The input data, collected from cameras and force plates, is ltered using a Butterworth second order low-pass lter with properly chosen cut-off frequencies [17]. In order to investigate the importance of kinematically consistent data to the quality of the results, the inverse dynamic analysis is carried out with and without kinematically consistent input data. The results are obtained for the complete set of kinematic joints of the biomechanical model described before. However, only the results referring the right lower limb of the model are presented, together with reference results of a similar gait analysis by Winter [9]. Figures 10 through 13 illustrate the net moments-of-force obtained for the anatomical joints of the right lower limb. Signicant differences exist between the system response calculated using kinematically consistent and kinematically non-consistent data. The moments-of-force results from the analysis using consistent kinematic data correlate better with the results of Winter [9] than those results obtained using non-consistent data. The

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Figure 12. Net moment-of-force at the hip joint.

Figure 13. Net moment-of-force of support.

effect of kinematic consistency is especially marked in the ankle moment results. The data provided by Winter is obtained using a two-dimensional model and a formulation based on joint coordinates, for which there are no constraint equations. Therefore, the reference data set results from an inverse dynamic analysis for which the kinematic data is consistent by nature. No differences are observed in the system response when comparing the results obtained with the kinematically consistent positions, velocities and accelerations with an input data set where only consistent positions are used. This result reveals that the process of direct spline differentiation of the consistent trajectory curves assures sufcient accuracy in the gait analysis for the type of motion acquired.

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M.P.T. SILVA AND J.A.C. AMBRSIO

A multibody methodology based on the use of natural coordinates was presented and discussed in the framework of its application to the inverse dynamic analysis of gait. It was shown that one of the principal features of this formulation the possibility of different rigid bodies sharing the same points and vectors to dene the kinematic joints must be avoided in the denition of the biomechanical model if the intersegmentar reaction forces are to be calculated. The quality of the results obtained in the inverse dynamic analysis is dependent on the consistency of the kinematic data used. Therefore, after the spatial motion of the anatomical points is reconstructed and before it can be used in the gait analysis, it must be altered so that the kinematic constraints are fullled. Moreover, the velocities and accelerations of the anatomical points were obtained by using the time derivatives of the constraint equations rather than by direct differentiation of the polynomial interpolation of the points positions. It was shown that the consistency in the kinematic data led to results for the joint moments-of-force with better quality. Acknowledgment The work reported was supported by Fundao para a Cincia e Tecnologia through the project PRAXIS/P/EME 14040/98, entitled Human Locomotion Biomechanics Using Advanced Mathematical Models and Optimization Procedures. References
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