The AnyBody System

AnyBody Software

The AnyBody Modeling System

The project was the origin of The AnyBody Modeling System, a unique tool for analysis of the musculoskeletal system of humans or animals. It compute muscle forces, joint reactions, metabolism, mechanical work, efficiency, etc. for given movements.

Any property of the AnyBody model is parametric, and the system can be used for optimization. This means that AnyBody can determine movement patterns, working positions, anthropometric data, boundary conditions etc. We call this technique inverse-inverse dynamics. To understand it better, take a look at our squat jump example.

Technically, the system is characterized by the following properties

	It uses an inverse dynamics optimization technique to solve the muscle recruitment problem and reverses this by means of other optimization techniques so that forward dynamics problems can also be treated.
	It is object-oriented and developed in C++.
	It runs on the MS Windows platform. A cross-platform version of the system is being considered.
	Graphics display is based on OpenGL.
	It handles very large models on small computers. It is entirely feasible to analyze a model with several hundreds of muscles on an ordinary PC.
	Models are developed in the body modeling language AnyScript.

Applications of AnyBody

AnyBody can be used to investigate a number of fundamental questions as well as to solve practical problems of ergonomics. Typical investigations could be:

	what are the benefits of antagonist muscle forces?
	why do we have bi-articular muscles?
	how should we design a workplace for a particular repetitive work process?
	what are the causes of wrist-, elbow-, and shoulder pains from working with a computer mouse?
	how can we apply functional electrical stimulation of muscles to obtain a desired motion?
	what is the ideal anthropometry of a sportsman in a particular discipline?
	how can the central nervous system relieve the load on an injured joint, muscle, or ligament, and what consequences does it have for the rest of the musculoskeletal system?

Read more about AnyBody's analysis or optimization facilities.

Availability

Development of software with a professional user interface and comprehensive documentation is not a research task, but it is necessary if other than the developers are to benefit from the technology. Therefore, the further development has been put in the hands of the commercial company AnyBody Technology. Please refer to the home page of AnyBody Technology for further information.

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