Modeling Upper Body Movement

[Aaron Gonzalez]

Hi, I will be using OpenCap for a project, I'm wondering if modeling an upper body exercise (incline bench press - then importing the model into OpenSim) can be done, as most of the information and topics I've seen related to OpenCap are about lower body movements.

[Matt Petrucci]

Hi Aaron, yes you can collect the kinematics using OpenCap, and we have options for two different shoulders. Note, if you are interested in running dynamic simulations, the ISB shoulder is not supported.

While capturing data, you will want to make sure that the entire body of the person is visible in your videos, and try to reduce occlusions as much as you can. See our best practices.

If you are wanting to use your own upper body OpenSim model, you can re-compute the kinematics using the .trc file from OpenCap and your .osim file in OpenSim.

[Aaron Gonzalez]

Thanks for the reply, are the options for the shoulders available through OpenCap or OpenSim? I will be running a dynamic simulation, I'm assuming I can add the force from a barbell with weight through OpenSim? I apologize if this question is a little out of the scope of this forum, I appreciate if you could point me in the right direction.
Thanks so much,
Aaron

[Matt Petrucci]

Hi Aaron, OpenCap has models with the 2 shoulders I mentioned, and there are several other shoulder models that exists on SimTK. Here is one. It all depends on what your research questions are and if a more complex model of the shoulder is needed.

Yes you can add the barbell weight to the hands, but you will need to account for the forces of bench as well.

We encourage you to apply to a future Restore Virtual Office Hours if you have more questions. We announce them via our newsletter. You can subscribe here.