Industry/Automotive: Ford develops new seating technology using AnyBody

AnyBody Technology's long relationship with Ford Research Center in Aachen, Germany, has recently resulted in a breakthrough comfort design. A new seating technology named Active Motion™ will be introduced in the 2010 models of Ford Taurus and Taurus SHO. The Active Motion™ technology placed in Multi-Contour seats provides subtle massage for the driver preventing muscle fatigue. AnyBody was used to study the activation patterns of certain muscles and set the design criteria for the development of the Active Motion™ technology.
Read more...

Further details on the Active Motion™ technology
http://www.ford.com/about-ford/news-announcements/press-releases/press-releases-detail/pr-2010-taurus-multicontour-seats-30533 

Industry/Orthopedics: Applying muscle forces to in-vitro implant testing adds realism to load regimes

AnyBody Technology can provide unique value to the in-vitro testing of implants.

Today, in-vitro tests of implants do not take in-vivo muscle forces into account, meaning that the implant might not be tested with realistic load cases. With AnyBody it is possible to simulate the in-vivo load conditions for any activity of daily living. When applying the in-vivo force data to a test rig you get results that match the loading conditions on devices implanted in living people performing real activities.

Software: Preview of new feature to come in AnyBody version 4.1

The soon-to-be-released version 4.1 of the AMS will contain a new algorithm for handling kinematically over-determinate systems (see previous article).

This new feature allows for a smoother workflow between motion capture studies and advanced musculoskeletal analysis in AnyBody, applicable for full body simulations rather than just the lower extremity.

The benefit of this new Kinematically Over-determinate Systems Solver (KOSS) is that it optimizes motion and model parameters simultaneously, e.g. marker locations and bone lengths.

In this example of ingress/egress the new feature was introduced. The motion, marker locations, and bone lengths were automatically optimized to follow the recorded marker motion as close as possible. And as you can see, the resultant motion is very realistic.

It is with great expectation that we are offering this new feature to all of you in the forthcoming version release.

Note: The dataset for the ingress/egress was kindly provided by Raphael Bichler, BMW Group AG.

Software: Server platforms supported by AnyBody

With version 4 of the AnyBody Modeling System™ floating network and node locked licenses were introduced, succeeding the former dongle based licensing system. To rid our loyal users of any doubt, we are still supporting the dongles, and software maintenance can still be subscribed to for dongle users. For floating network license users, we have experienced some variance in platform use. The AnyBody Modeling System™ is supported on MS Windows 32/64 bit, and Linux 32/64 bit platforms. Solaris platforms are planned to be the next type supported, and we will inform users when this is effectuated.

User Community: A note from the ISB 2009 in Cape Town

The AnyBody-sponsored "Andrzej J. Komor New Investigator Award" was won by Friedl De Groote from K.U. Leuven, Belgium.

The award of USD 500 was given to Friedl at the banquet of the TGCS (Technical Group on Computer Simulation) on July 4th 2009 for her presentation: "Physiology based dynamic analysis of human motion by sequential convex programming". (Co-authors: I. Jonkers, B. Demeulenaere, J. Swevers, J. De Schutter.

Congratulations to Friedl for the achievement.

User Community: Ph.D degree awarded to M.S. Andersen

Michael Skipper Andersen has been awarded the Ph.D. degree at the Faculties of Engineering, Science and Medicine, Aalborg University.

Michael Skipper Andersen defended his Ph.D. thesis “Kinematically over-determinate musculoskeletal systems – modeling, kinematic analysis and parameter identification”. The Ph.D. work concerned analysis of musculoskeletal systems and in particular kinematic analysis and parameter identification of over-determinate musculoskeletal systems were treated. The work has resulted in the development of general kinematic analysis methods which can provide a simpler and easier-to-use interface between musculoskeletal modeling and motion capture technologies.

The work has been published in international journals and international conference proceedings. Michael Skipper Andersen started his new job as Assistant Professor at Aalborg University.

Events

Oct 21-22: Deutscher Kongress für Orthopädie und Unfallchirurgie, Berlin, Germany

Oct 23-24: Eurospine, Warsaw, Poland

Nov 18-20: ANSYS Conference & CADFEM Users' Meeting, Leipzig, Germany

Live Webcasts

Oct 28: A multi-segment musculoskeletal foot model for clinical gait analysis, presented by Prabhav Saraswat, University of Utah, Department of Bioengineering

Publications

M. Grujicic, B. Pandurangan, G. Arakere, W. C. Bell, T. He, X. Xie, "Seat-cushion and Soft-tissue Material Modeling and a Finite Element Investigation of the Seating Comfort for Passenger-vehicle Occupants," Materials and Design, May 2009

J. Rasmussen, S. Carbes, S. T. Gomaa, "A computational model of a reverse shoulder joint prosthesis", Presented at the Symposium on Computational Methods in Orthopaedic Biomechanics (Pre-ORS), Las Vegas, 2009.

L-F. Lee, M.S. Narayanan, S. Kannan, F. Mendel, V.N. Krovi, "Case Studies of Musculoskeletal-Simulation-Based Rehabilitation Program Evaluation", IEEE Transactions on Robotics, Vol. 25, No. 3, pp.634-638, June 2009.

Marie Lund Ohlsson, "New Methods for Movement Technique Development in Cross-Country Skiing Using Mathematical Models and Simulation", Mid-Sweden University, Licentiate Thesis 41, ISSN 1652-8948.