A real-time full-chain wearable sensor-based musculoskeletal simulation: an OpenSim-ROS Integration

TL;DR

This paper introduces a real-time, integrated wearable sensor framework for musculoskeletal simulation that combines OpenSim, ROS, and sensors to enable accurate, portable movement analysis for rehabilitation and robotics.

Contribution

It presents a novel integrated framework that seamlessly combines wearable sensors with OpenSim and ROS for real-time musculoskeletal modeling and simulation.

Findings

Successfully estimated inverse kinematics for upper and lower body movements.

Effectively estimated ankle inverse dynamics and muscle activations during daily activities.

Demonstrated feasibility of portable, real-time movement analysis using wearable sensors.

Abstract

Musculoskeletal modeling and simulations enable the accurate description and analysis of the movement of biological systems with applications such as rehabilitation assessment, prosthesis, and exoskeleton design. However, the widespread usage of these techniques is limited by costly sensors, laboratory-based setups, computationally demanding processes, and the use of diverse software tools that often lack seamless integration. In this work, we address these limitations by proposing an integrated, real-time framework for musculoskeletal modeling and simulations that leverages OpenSimRT, the robotics operating system (ROS), and wearable sensors. As a proof-of-concept, we demonstrate that this framework can reasonably well describe inverse kinematics of both lower and upper body using either inertial measurement units or fiducial markers. Additionally, we show that it can effectively estimate inverse dynamics of the ankle joint and muscle activations of major lower limb muscles during daily activities, including walking, squatting and sit to stand, stand to sit when combined with pressure insoles. We believe this work lays the groundwork for further studies with more complex real-time and wearable sensor-based human movement analysis systems and holds potential to advance technologies in rehabilitation, robotics and exoskeleton designs.