• ETRI Journal
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• v.40 no.5
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• pp.653-663
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• 2018

Patients with spinal cord injuries cannot move their limbs using their intact muscles. A suitable controller can be used to move their arms by employing the functional electrical stimulation method. In this article, a fuzzy exponential sliding-mode controller is designed to move a musculoskeletal human arm model to track an optimal trajectory in the sagittal plane. This optimal arm trajectory is obtained by developing a policy for the central nervous system. In order to specify the optimal trajectory between two points, two dynamic and static optimal criteria are applied simultaneously. The first dynamic objective function is defined to minimize the joint torques, and the second static optimization is offered to minimize the muscle forces at each moment. In addition, fuzzy logic is used to tune the sliding-surface parameter to enable an appropriate tracking performance. Simulation results are evaluated and compared with experimental data for upward and downward movements of the human arm.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.24 no.10
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• pp.1398-1401
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• 2020

We present the concept of a Medical Digital Twin (MDT) that can predict and analyze medical diseases using computer simulations and introduce a dynamic virtual body capture system to create it. The MDT is a technology that creates a 3D digital virtual human body by reflecting individual medical and biometric information. The virtual human body is composed of a static virtual human body that reflects an individual's internal and external information and a dynamic virtual human body that reflects his motion. Especially we describe an early version of the dynamic virtual body capture system that enables continuous simulation of musculoskeletal diseases.

• Korean Journal of Computational Design and Engineering
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.68-79
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• 2014

Human model simulation has been widely used in various industrial areas such as ergonomic design, product evaluation and characteristic analysis of work-related musculoskeletal disorders. However, the process of building digital human models and capturing their behaviors requires many costly and time-consuming fabrication iterations. To overcome the limitations of this expensive and time-consuming process, many studies have recently presented a markerless motion capture approach that reconstructs the time-varying skeletal motions from optical devices. However, the drawback of the markerless motion capture approach is that the phenomenon of occlusion of motion data occurs in real-time human simulation. In this study, we propose a systematic method of discriminating missing or inaccurate motion data due to motion occlusion and interpolating a sequence of motion frames captured by a markerless depth camera.

• Journal of Electrical Engineering and Technology
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• v.9 no.5
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• pp.1774-1779
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• 2014

It is known that muscle strength of human body can alter or deteriorate as aging. In this study, we present an inverse dynamics simulation to investigate the effect of muscle strength on performing the daily activities. A 3D musculoskeletal model developed in this study includes several segments of whole body, long and short muscles, ligaments and disc stiffness. Five daily activities such as standing, flexion, finger tip to floor, standing lift close and lifting flexed were simulated with varying the maximum muscle force capacities (MFC) of each muscle fascicles from 30 to $90N/cm^2$ with an increment of $30N/cm^2$. In the result, no solution can be obtained for finger tip to floor and lifting flexed with $30N/cm^2$. Even though the solution was available for standing lift close activity in case of $30N/cm^2$ capacity, many of muscle fascicles hit the upper bound of muscle strength which means that it is not physiologically possible to perform the acvities in reality. For lifing flexed, even the case of $60N/cm^2$ capaciy, represents the moderate healthy people, was not able to find the solutions, showing that 18 muscles among 258 muscle fascicles reached 100% of muscle capacity. The estimated results imply that people who have low muscle strength such as elders or rehabilitation patients were required higher muscle work to perform and maintain the same daily activities than healthy one.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.30 no.3
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• pp.241-246
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• 2009

Since inappropriate muscle forces mean that people cannot perform some activities related to roles of the muscle, muscle forces have been considered as an important parameter in clinic. Therefore, many methods have been introduced to estimate muscle forces indirectly. One of the methods is muscle tissue dynamics and it is widely used in commercial softwares including musculoskeletal model, such as SIMM. They, however, need motion data captured from 3-dimensional motion analysis system. In this study, we introduced an algorithm to estimate muscle forces in real-time by using joint angles. The heel-rise movements were performed for a normal with 3-dimensional motion analysis system, EMG measurement system, and electrogoniometers. Joint angles obtained from electrogoniometers and EMG signals were used to estimate muscle forces. Simulation was performed to find muscle forces using motion data which was imported into musculoskeletal software. As the results, muscle lengths and forces from the developed algorithm were similar to those from commercial software in pattern. Results of this study would be helpful to implement a tool to calculate reasonable muscle forces in real-time.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.51-56
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• 2008

In these days, work-related musculoskeletal disorders(WMSDs) is one of the issues in the shipbuilding industry. As the number of injured workers and demands for worker's compensation have rapidly increased, improvement of work conditions and environments to prevent WMSDs has been more demanded. To reduce WMSDs' hazards in the shipbuilding industry, simulation technique which showed it's ability of increasing the manufacturing productivity was applied, because simulation technique has the evaluation ability for a worker's danger level of production process by RULA(Rapid Upper Limb Assesment). In this research, worker's altitude had modeled and worker's action has simulated. After the caution level was evaluated, we pointed out clues which had high workload. To reduce work-load, we applied ergonomic principles for improving working conditions and environments. Improved working conditions and environments were simulated using human modelling and simulation and their workload were evaluated again.

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.81-88
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• 2007

The objective of this study was to investigate the validity of the digital ergonomic simulation (DES) method as a prospective alternative to the ergonomic analyses conducted by experts. The DES method utilizes commercial digital manufacturing software, and can compute the RULA scores continuously throughout the simulated work cycle. It was shown in a case study that the accuracy and objectivity of the DES method are superior to those obtained by experts. Also, it was demonstrated that the DES method has a distinct capability to simulate and validate a proposed work plan. Major limitations of the current DES method lie in the extensive time and efforts required for accurate digital simulation, which may be overcome through an automatic module for RULA data acquisition and a motion capture system.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.21 no.8
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• pp.157-163
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• 2004

Scoliosis is a complex musculoskeletal dieses requiring 3-D treatment with surgical instrumentation. To investigate the effects of correction surgery, a finite element model of personalized model of the scoliotic spine that will allow the design of clinical test providing optimal estimation of the post-operation results was developed. Three dimensional skeletal parts, such as vertebrae, clavicle and scapular were modeled as rigid bodies with keeping their morphologies. Kinematical joints and spring elements were adapted to represent the inter-vertebral disc and ligaments respectively. With this model, two types of surgery procedure, distraction procedure with Harrington device and rod derotation procedure with pedicle screw and rod system had been carried out. The obtained simulation results were comparatively corresponding to the post operational outcomes and successfully demonstrated qualitative analysis of surgical effectiveness. From this analysis, it has been found that the preparing of appropriate rod curvature and its insertion was more important than just performing the excessive derotation for scoliosis correction.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.21 no.8
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• pp.171-179
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• 2004

The purpose of this study is to generate cycling motion for FES (functional electrical stimulation) using knee muscles only. We investigated the possibility by simulation. The musculoskeletal model used in this simulation was simplified as 5-rigid links and 2 muscles (knee extensor and flexor). For the improvement of the present feedforward control in FES, we included feedback path in the control system. The control system was developed based on the biological neuronal system and was represented by three sub-systems. The first is a higher neuronal system that generates the motion command for each joint. The second is the lower neuronal system that divides the motion command to each muscle. And the third is a sensory feedback system corresponding to the somatic sensory system. Control system parameters were adjusted by a genetic algorithm (GA) based on the natural selection theory. GA searched the better parameters in terms of the cost function where the energy consumption, muscle force smoothness, and the cycling speed of each parameter set (individual) are evaluated. As a result, cycling was implemented using knee muscles only. The proposed control system based on the nervous system model worked well even with disturbances.

• Journal of the Korea Society for Simulation
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.93-101
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• 2006

Recently, work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSDs) become a hot issue in the industrial fields. To prevent the potential risk of workers, various approaches have been adopted. One of the approaches is to improve the design of product, that of jig (or fixture) and that of workstation in the early stage of the development. 3D simulation technology is known as the powerful method for detecting such problems before constructing the workstation, because it is possible to evaluate the posture of worker using 3D models in a cyber space. It enables to find the unexpected problems and save the time and cost for redesign and rework. This paper introduces a 3D simulation case study of workers in an excavator factory. 3D models of products, jigs were developed with CATIA. The assembly processes were animated in IGRIP and DPM. Finally the various postures of worker were simulated using Human. As a result, some postures were analysed as the risky jobs and the result of simulation was used to improve the system.