Trajectory Optimization of a 3D Musculoskeletal Model with Inertial Sensors

Inertial measurement units (IMUs) consist of accelerometers and gyroscopes and are light weighted and cheap wearable sensors which have the potential to replace lab-based optical motion capturing (OMC). For walking, conventional inverse dynamic methods were used after estimating kinematics and ground reaction forces and moments from inertial data [1]. In contrast to that, we first presented trajectory optimization to directly track noisy inertial data with a planar musculoskeletal model for walking and running [2]. Trajectory optimization ensures a dynamically consistent simulation. However, the planar lower-body model used in [2] is not capable of capturing for example lateral stability required to evaluate running shoes. Here, the trajectory optimization driven by IMU data is extended towards the estimation of 3D kinematics and kinetics of running.