Flexing Computational Muscle: Modeling and Simulation of Musculotendon Dynamics

Muscle-driven simulations of human and animal motion are widely used to complement physical experiments for studying movement dynamics. Musculotendon models are an essential component of muscle-driven simulations, yet neither the computational speed nor the biological accuracy of the simulated forces has been adequately evaluated. Here we compare the speed and accuracy of three musculotendon models: two with an elastic tendon (an equilibrium model and a damped equilibrium model) and one with a rigid tendon. Our simulation benchmarks demonstrate that the equilibrium and damped equilibrium models produce similar force profiles but have different computational speeds. At low activation, the damped equilibrium…

• EC
  European Commission

  Award: 248189
• NI
  National Institutes of Health

  Awards: U54 GM072970, R24 HD065690, GM072970
• DA
  Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency

  Award: W911QX-12-C-0018
• AR
  Advanced Research Projects Agency