Musculoskeletal simulation of walking with cane on both hands

[Hoon Kim]

Hello Opensim community!

I am planning a pilot test (motion capture, 2 force plates, and emg) for walking with cane on both hand.
For external forces from cane, I plan to install a single axial force transducer on the end of the cane to get force between cane and ground. And, I plan to put additional markers on the ~top and ~bottom of the cane to get orientation of the cane.

Is this setting proper to estimate muscle forces in terms of external force as an input?

And, how can I put the force data from the force transducer into the OpenSim simulation? (e.g., position, force, torque in external force .mot file)

Thank you very much for any comments!

Hoon Kim
hkim0625@sch.ac.kr
Department of Sports Medicine
Soonchunhyang University, South Korea

[Carmichael Ong]

As long as you can get the external force/moment and the point at which the force is applied, this should work. For your canes, it seems like it should give you the force and point applied (with the markers). One question is whether the canes can generate a moment (something similar to the free moment of the foot on the ground), or if this moment is negligible for something like a cane.

You can add these forces into an external force file similar the forces, following some of the files from the gait examples in the Resources packaged with OpenSim.

[Hoon Kim]

Hello Carmichael Ong,

Thank you very much for your help!

Sincerely,

Hoon