The Mechanical Elements#

Old tutorial:

This tutorial has not yet been updated to ver. 7 of the AnyBody Modeling System. Some concepts may have changed.

Musculoskeletal modeling is really just an advanced application of the laws of mechanics described by one of the greatest scientists of all times, Sir Isaac Newton, more than 300 years ago. So the elements of the models you are working on in the AnyBody Modeling System are mostly mechanical in nature, and to use them you must have sound understanding of the laws of mechanics in general and of Newton’s three laws of motion in particular.

The mechanical elements of an AnyBody model are

  • Segments used to represent bones and other rigid elements of models

  • Joints used to connect segments and allow them to articulate with respect to each other

  • Drivers used to specify the movement the model should perform and optionally provide power input as motors

  • Kinematic measures abstraction representation of kinematical constraints

  • Forces forces applied to the model

This tutorial also contains a short introduction to inverse dynamics and how it differs from forward dynamics.

This tutorial consists of the following lessons:

Let’s head for Lesson 1: Segments.