New surgical approaches for total hip arthroplasty (THA) are being developed to reduce muscle damage sustained during surgery, in the hope to allow better muscle functioning afterwards. The goal of this study was to compare the muscle sparing anterior (ANT) approach to a traditional lateral (LAT) approach with three-dimensional motion analysis. Kinematics and kinetics were obtained with an infrared camera system and force plates. It was hypothesized that (1) the ANT group would have closer to normal range of motion, moments and powers, compared to the LAT group, and that (2) the ANT group would have higher peak hip abduction moment than the LAT group. Forty patients undergoing unilateral THA for osteoarthritis between the ages of 50 and 75 (20 ANT, 20 LAT) were asked to perform three trials of walking, stair ascent and stair descent. Patients were assessed between six to twelve months postoperatively. Twenty age- and weight-matched control participants (CON) provided normative data. Results indicated that both THA groups had gait anomalies compared to the CON group. Both THA groups had reduced hip abduction moment during walking (CON vs. ANT: p<0.001; CON vs. LAT: p=0.011), and the ANT group had a significantly lower hip abduction moment compared to the LAT group (p=0.008). Similar results were observed during stair descent, where the ANT group had reduced peak hip abduction moment compared to the CON group (p<0.001) and the LAT group (p=0.014). This indicates that the anterior approach did not allow better gait and stair climbing ability after THA. It is therefore thought that other variables, such as preoperative gait adaptations, trauma from the surgery, or postoperative protection mechanisms to avoid loading the prosthetic hip, are factors that might be more important than surgical approach in determining the mechanics of THA patients after surgery.

The adaptation of inverse dynamics was performed to quantitatively examine the subtle locomotor changes, previously undetectable, in rodent locomotion following nervous system injury. The first experiment performed an injury with known effects, a unilateral lesion of the medial and lateral branches of the left tibial nerve of Long-Evans rats, and measured the resulting data via inverse dynamics. Special effort was made to account for skin movement artefacts using a global optimization method for marker digitization. The second experiment attempted to apply this technique to Long-Evans rats with spinal hemisections at spinal level T-10. After the peripheral nerve injury to the tibial nerve branches, the main findings were that ankle joint still produces an extensor moment and positive power without the active contraction of the gastrocnemius m. It is possible that this phenomenon is due to passive contractile elements of the muscle and tendon. In addition, the knee and hip of the lesion leg stiffen, resulting in substantial reductions in moment generation and nearly total losses of both negative and positive power production. There were also compensations made by the opposite hindlimb and contralateral forelimb. The spinal cord hemisection produced subtle, complicated intra and interlimb changes in both joint moment and joint power analysis that could not be seen by looking at joint angles alone.

The Niagara Foot (NF) is a relatively new prosthetic design, primarily intended for use in developing countries. It combines low cost and durability with high performance energy return features. The design has been successfully tested mechanically and in field trials, but to date there has been little quantitative gait data describing the performance of the foot. Biomechanical gait analysis techniques will be used to extract quantitative gait measures. The current study is designed to characterize the effect of heel section stiffness parameter differences between a NF normal heel and a NF with a reduced material heel section., on gait characteristics in persons with unilateral trans-tibial amputations (TTA). Standardized biomechanical gait analysis techniques, adapted for this population, were used to extract quantitative gait measures. Five persons with TTA performed walking tasks while 3D ground reaction forces were recorded via an embedded force platform. A motion capture system also recorded the 3D segmental motion of the lower limbs and torso of each subject. These were combined to calculate net joint moments and mechanical power at the hip and knee of both limbs. These data were compared between a normal NF and a NF with a modified heel. Each participant had a period of two-week adaptation prior to any testing. An EMG system and a prosthesis evaluation questionnaire were used to help analyze the condition. The overall hypothesis of this study was that modification of the heel section stiffness would change several aspects of gait. Although the gait pattern differences between participants and the low participant number produced no significant differences between the conditions for all variables, trends were observed in multiple outcomes. These results report preliminary evidence that for some participants the heel material reduction does impact their gait by showing a different loading phase during the transition between the heel strike and the full contact with the ground. The NF2 may move the gait toward a more flexed knee position. Furthermore, despite a reduction in the material of the heel section results showed that the overall foot stiffness increased. This may be the result of the one-piece design and mechanics of the NF. Further investigations with a bigger cohort of people with TTA are required to look at the importance of the impact of the prosthetic foot heel stiffness.

The METU Gait Analysis System employs a computer program called Kiss-GAIT for the calculation of joint angles, moments and powers using force plate data and marker trajectories as input. Kiss-GAIT was developed using Delphi and is confined to calculations related to the standard gait protocol. Because the code lacks the flexibility required to carry out various test cases, the inverse dynamics formulation being used could not be verified and the extent of the error propagation problem could not be determined so far. The first aim of this study was to develop a code for the inverse dynamics model of the METU Gait Analysis System making use of the flexible programming environment provided by MATLAB. Verified and more reliable analysis results, obtained by reformulating the inverse dynamics algorithm in a new code, are presented. Secondly, data smoothing and differentiation techniques conventionally used in gait analysis were critically reviewed. A common tool used for filtering marker trajectories is the Butterworth digital filter. This thesis presents a modified, adaptive version of this classical tool that can handle non-stationary signals owing to its coefficients which are functions of local signal structure. The results of this thesis indicate the dominancy of ground reactions as compared to inertial effects in normal human gait. This implies that the accuracy needed in body segment inertial parameter estimation is not a critical factor. On the other hand, marker trajectories must be as accurate as possible for meaningful kinetic patterns. While any smoothing and differentiation routine that produces reasonable estimates is sufficient for joint moment calculation purposes, the estimation performance becomes a key requirement for the calculation of joint powers.

The purpose of the thesis is to achieve a hybrid force and motion control method of parallel manipulators working in a constrained environment, in the presence of joint flexibility that occurs at the actuated joints. A flexible joint is modeled and the equations of motion of the parallel manipulator are derived by using the Lagrange formulation. The structural damping of the active joints, viscous friction at the passive joints and the rotor damping are also considered in the model. It is shown that in a flexible joint manipulator, the acceleration level inverse dynamic equations are singular because the control torques do not have instantaneous effect on the manipulator end-effector contact forces and accelerations due to the flexibility. Implicit numerical integration methods are utilized for solving the singular equations. As a case study, a two legged constrained planar parallel manipulator with three degrees of freedom is simulated to illustrate the performance of the method.

Advances in graphics and robotics have increased the importance of tools for synthesizing humanoid movements to control animated characters and physical robots. There is also an increasing need for analyzing human movements for clinical diagnosis and rehabilitation. Existing tools can be expensive, inefficient, or difficult to use. Using simulated physics and motion capture to develop an interactive virtual reality environment, we capture natural human movements in response to controlled stimuli. This research then applies insights into the mathematics underlying physics simulation to adapt the physics solver to support many important tasks involved in analyzing and synthesizing humanoid movement. These tasks include fitting an articulated physical model to motion capture data, modifying the model pose to achieve a desired configuration (inverse kinematics), inferring internal torques consistent with changing pose data (inverse dynamics), and transferring a movement from one model to another model (retargeting). The result is a powerful and intuitive process for analyzing and synthesizing movement in a single unified framework. / text

Multi-task learning refers to learning multiple tasks simultaneously, in order to avoid tabula rasa learning and to share information between similar tasks during learning. We consider a multi-task Gaussian process regression model that learns related functions by inducing correlations between tasks directly. Using this model as a reference for three other multi-task models, we provide a broad unifying view of multi-task learning. This is possible because, unlike the other models, the multi-task Gaussian process model encodes task relatedness explicitly. Each multi-task learning model generally assumes that learning multiple tasks together is beneficial. We analyze how and the extent to which multi-task learning helps improve the generalization of supervised learning. Our analysis is conducted for the average-case on the multi-task Gaussian process model, and we concentrate mainly on the case of two tasks, called the primary task and the secondary task. The main parameters are the degree of relatedness ρ between the two tasks, and πS, the fraction of the total training observations from the secondary task. Among other results, we show that asymmetric multitask learning, where the secondary task is to help the learning of the primary task, can decrease a lower bound on the average generalization error by a factor of up to ρ2πS. When there are no observations for the primary task, there is also an intrinsic limit to which observations for the secondary task can help the primary task. For symmetric multi-task learning, where the two tasks are to help each other to learn, we find the learning to be characterized by the term πS(1 − πS)(1 − ρ2). As far as we are aware, our analysis contributes to an understanding of multi-task learning that is orthogonal to the existing PAC-based results on multi-task learning. For more than two tasks, we provide an understanding of the multi-task Gaussian process model through structures in the predictive means and variances given certain configurations of training observations. These results generalize existing ones in the geostatistics literature, and may have practical applications in that domain. We evaluate the multi-task Gaussian process model on the inverse dynamics problem for a robot manipulator. The inverse dynamics problem is to compute the torques needed at the joints to drive the manipulator along a given trajectory, and there are advantages to learning this function for adaptive control. A robot manipulator will often need to be controlled while holding different loads in its end effector, giving rise to a multi-context or multi-load learning problem, and we treat predicting the inverse dynamics for a context/load as a task. We view the learning of the inverse dynamics as a function approximation problem and place Gaussian process priors over the space of functions. We first show that this is effective for learning the inverse dynamics for a single context. Then, by placing independent Gaussian process priors over the latent functions of the inverse dynamics, we obtain a multi-task Gaussian process prior for handling multiple loads, where the inter-context similarity depends on the underlying inertial parameters of the manipulator. Experiments demonstrate that this multi-task formulation is effective in sharing information among the various loads, and generally improves performance over either learning only on single contexts or pooling the data over all contexts. In addition to the experimental results, one of the contributions of this study is showing that the multi-task Gaussian process model follows naturally from the physics of the inverse dynamics.

New surgical approaches for total hip arthroplasty (THA) are being developed to reduce muscle damage sustained during surgery, in the hope to allow better muscle functioning afterwards. The goal of this study was to compare the muscle sparing anterior (ANT) approach to a traditional lateral (LAT) approach with three-dimensional motion analysis. Kinematics and kinetics were obtained with an infrared camera system and force plates. It was hypothesized that (1) the ANT group would have closer to normal range of motion, moments and powers, compared to the LAT group, and that (2) the ANT group would have higher peak hip abduction moment than the LAT group. Forty patients undergoing unilateral THA for osteoarthritis between the ages of 50 and 75 (20 ANT, 20 LAT) were asked to perform three trials of walking, stair ascent and stair descent. Patients were assessed between six to twelve months postoperatively. Twenty age- and weight-matched control participants (CON) provided normative data. Results indicated that both THA groups had gait anomalies compared to the CON group. Both THA groups had reduced hip abduction moment during walking (CON vs. ANT: p<0.001; CON vs. LAT: p=0.011), and the ANT group had a significantly lower hip abduction moment compared to the LAT group (p=0.008). Similar results were observed during stair descent, where the ANT group had reduced peak hip abduction moment compared to the CON group (p<0.001) and the LAT group (p=0.014). This indicates that the anterior approach did not allow better gait and stair climbing ability after THA. It is therefore thought that other variables, such as preoperative gait adaptations, trauma from the surgery, or postoperative protection mechanisms to avoid loading the prosthetic hip, are factors that might be more important than surgical approach in determining the mechanics of THA patients after surgery.

O processo de instalação da fadiga implica na mudança do padrão coordenativo durante a pedalada. Desta forma a análise da contribuição de cada articulação do membro inferior para o somatório absoluto dos momentos articulares se faz necessária para o melhor entendimento dos mecanismos relacionados aos efeitos do processo de instalação da fadiga sobre o padrão coordenativo no ciclismo. O objetivo deste estudo foi comparar a contribuição das articulações do quadril, joelho e tornozelo para o somatório absoluto dos momentos articulares resultantes, assim como a força resultante e a cinemática destas articulações, ao longo do tempo, nos modelos experimentais de carga constante e de carga incremental até a exaustão. Foram avaliados onze ciclistas de estrada da categoria elite, que participam de competições regionais (Texas) e nacionais (Estados Unidos) do sexo masculino (idade 31 ± 7 anos; consumo máximo de oxigênio 62,84 ± 4,86 ml.kg-1.min-1; potência máxima 407 ± 37 W). Onze ciclistas foram avaliados no primeiro dia de avaliação, este constituindo um teste de ciclismo máximo com incrementos de carga a cada dois minutos (75, 90 e 100% da PO máxima estimada, respectivamente). No segundo dia de avaliação, dez ciclistas foram avaliados em um protocolo de ciclismo com carga entre 90 e 100% da PO máxima, definida no primeiro dia. Em ambos os testes foram mensurados o consumo de oxigênio (VO2), a força aplicada no pedal direito e a cinemática do membro inferior direito dos ciclistas. Se utilizou um modelo bidimensional dos segmentos da coxa, perna e pé, a fim de calcular as forças e momentos resultantes nas articulações do quadril, joelho e tornozelo, por meio da técnica da dinâmica inversa. Foram analisados o somatório absoluto dos momentos articulares resultantes (SMA), o percentual de contribuição de cada articulação para o SMA, a força resultante e a cinemática das articulações do quadril, joelho e tornozelo nos três estágios do teste incremental (75, 90 e 100% da PO máxima) e em quatro instantes do teste de carga constante (10, 40, 70 e 90% do tempo total do teste). No primeiro dia de avaliação (estudo 1) foi observada redução significativa da cadência de pedalada no estágio com carga a 100% da POMáx, comparado aos estágios 75% e 90% da POMáx. Observou-se ainda aumento significativo da contribuição do joelho para o SMA, no estágio a 100% da POMáx, comparado aos estágios 75% e 90% da POMáx, devido ao aumento significativo do momento resultante na articulação do joelho, no estágio a 100% da POMáx, em relação aos estágios com carga a 75 e 90% da POMáx. A força resultante nas três articulações analisadas apresentou aumento significativo ao longo do teste de carga incremental. Para as variáveis cinemáticas, foi observada redução significativa no valor médio do ângulo do tornozelo, assim como aumento significativo na sua amplitude de movimento no estágio 100% da POMáx. Para a articulação do quadril, foi observado aumento no valor médio do ângulo articular, assim como redução na sua amplitude de movimento no estágio com carga a 100% da POMáx. No segundo dia de avaliação (estudo 2) foi observada redução significativa da cadência de pedalada nos instantes 70 e 90% do tempo total de teste, comparados aos instantes 10 e 40% do tempo total. Esta foi acompanhada por redução da contribuição da articulação do tornozelo para o SMA, no instante 90% do tempo total comparado aos instantes 40 e 70% do tempo total do teste, devido ao aumento significativo do momento resultante na articulação do joelho no instante 90% comparado aos instantes 40 e 70% do tempo total e do quadril no instante 90% comparado aos instantes 10, 40 e 70% do tempo total. Se observou aumento na força resultante nas três articulações analisadas, assim como alterações na cinemática das mesmas ao longo do teste (redução do ângulo médio da articulação do tornozelo, com aumento da amplitude de movimento, aumento significativo do ângulo médio das articulações do joelho e do quadril). Os resultados observados indicaram alterações no padrão coordenativo dos ciclistas devido ao processo de instalação da fadiga, estes ocorrendo de forma distinta nos dois protocolos avaliados. As estratégias de controle das articulações durante a pedalada, parecem não ser características inerentes do gesto motor, sendo estas adaptáveis às demandas aumentadas nas articulações devido às alterações na cadência de pedalada e no processo de instalação da fadiga. / Fatigue process has been proposed to change the coordinative pattern; therefore, the analysis of the contribution of each joint to the average absolute joint moment should improve the understanding of the fatigue effects on the coordinative pattern during cycling. The aim of the present study was to compare the contribution of each joint to the average absolute joint moment, as the resultant force and kinematics of the hip, knee, and ankle joints, in an incremental and in a constant workload cycling test to exhaustion. Eleven male road cyclists competing at regional (Texas) and national (United States) levels (age: 31 ± 7 years; maximal oxygen uptake 62.84 ± 4.86 ml.kg-1.min-1; maximal power output 407 ± 37 W) volunteered to participate in the study. Eleven cyclists were submitted to an incremental maximal cycling test with two minutos of workload increment (75, 90 e 100% of POMax, respectively). On the second day, ten cyclists were evaluated in a constant cycling test, in which the workload was set between 90 and 100% of POMax, as defined on the first evaluation day. During both days the oxygen uptake (VO2), right pedal forces and lower limb kinematics were acquired. A bidimensional model of the thigh, leg and foot segments allowed to calculate the resultant forces and moments at the hip, knee and ankle joints by means of inverse dynamics. The average absolute joint moment (SMA), the contribution of each joint to the SMA, the resultant force and kinematics of the hip, knee and ankle joints were analyzed on three stages of incremental cycling test (75, 90 e 100% of POMax), and on four instants of constant workload cycling test (10, 40, 70 and 90% of total time). On the first evaluation day (study 1), a significant decrease of pedaling cadence was observed at the 100% of POMax stage, compared with 75% and 90% of POMax stages. There was also a significant increase of knee joint contribution to the SMA at 100% of POMax stage, compared with 75% and 90% of POMax stages, due to a significant increase of knee joint absolute moment at 100% of POMax stage, compared with 75% and 90% of POMax stages. The resultant joint force on the three joints have significantly increased, while joint kinematics has changed with the increase of workload (reduced mean ankle angle, with increased ankle range of motion) For hip joint, there was a significant increase of mean angle, with reduced range of motion at 100% of POMax. On the second evaluation day (study 2) a significant reduction of pedaling cadence was observed at the 70% and 90% of total time, compared with 10% and 40% of total time. This result was followed by a significant reduction of the ankle joint contribution to the SMA at the 90% of total time, compared with 40% and 70% of total time, due to a significant increase of knee resultant joint moment on the 90% of total time, compared with 40% and 70% of total time, and for the hip resultant joint moment at the 90% of total time, compared with 10, 40, and 70% of total time. There was also a significant increase of the resultant joint force and a change on kinematics of the three joints throught the test (reduced mean ankle angle, with increased range of motion, and a significant increase of the mean value of knee and hip angles). The results indicated that the coordinative pattern changed with fatigue, with discrete effects in each cycling test. The strategies of joint control during cycling should not be an innate robust motor behavior, but these strategies should be adaptable to higher demands on the joints, as significant changes on pedaling cadence and fatigue.

A análise da cinemática articular do joelho apresenta-se como fator fundamental na compreensão da função musculoesquelética e mecânica articular. No âmbito clínico, a avaliação do padrão normal de parâmetros biomecânicos, permite a obtenção de valores de referência para comparações com diferentes grupos de indivíduos lesados ou submetidos à cirurgia. Dessa forma, o presente estudo tem como objetivo mapear a normalidade de parâmetros biomecânicos da articulação do joelho, obtidos no plano sagital, durante a extensão do joelho em cadeia cinética aberta, sem carga, utilizando videofluoroscopia. Especificamente, pretende estimar o comportamento do centro de rotação tibiofemoral e patelofemoral, distância perpendicular do ligamento patelar e efetiva dos extensores de joelho, torque de resistência do segmento perna-pé, força do ligamento patelar, força do músculo quadríceps e força de contato patelofemoral, razão entre a força do ligamento patelar e a força do músculo quadríceps, razão entre a força de contato patelofemoral e a força do músculo quadríceps, pressão patelofemoral e tilt patelar ântero-posterior. Para a determinação dos parâmetros biomecânicos foram obtidas imagens radiográficas dinâmicas, por meio de videofluoroscopia, a partir da análise da articulação do joelho no plano sagital, de vinte e cinco indivíduos, executando três repetições do exercício de extensão de joelho em cadeia cinética aberta, sem carga externa aplicada à tíbia. As imagens obtidas foram reproduzidas e digitalizadas utilizando uma placa de captura da marca Silicon Graphics 320. Foram desenvolvidas rotinas computacionais utilizando o software Matlab para processamento e análise dos dados. Os dados obtidos foram analisados estatisticamente utilizando-se o pacote estatístico SPSS, versão 13.0. Foram plotados os valores obtidos para cada parâmetro em função do ângulo de flexão do joelho, para todos os indivíduos da amostra, e realizada uma análise de regressão entre as variáveis interpoladas, obtendo-se respectivo intervalo de confiança e coeficiente de determinação (r2). A partir dos resultados obtidos, foram verificadas correlações muito forte, forte e regular entre os parâmetros do estudo e o ângulo de flexão do joelho, indicando a possibilidade de mapear a normalidade dos parâmetros cinemáticos e cinéticos da articulação do joelho. / The kinetic and kinematics analysis of the knee joint is considered to be of prime importance in the understanding of the musculoskeletal function and joint mechanics. In the clinical scope, the biomechanics evaluation of the normal standard of biomechanics parameters, allow the attainment of indexes of reference for compare different groups of injured individuals or submitted to surgery. On this way, the present study has as the main goal estimate the normality of biomechanics parameters of the knee joint, gotten in the sagittal plane, during the knee extension in open kinetic chain, without load, by means of videofluoroscopy. Specifically, it intends to estimate how the tibiofemoral and patellofemoral rotation center behave, the patellar ligament moment arm and the effective moment arm of the knee extensors muscle group, the resistance torque of the segment leg-foot, patellar ligament force, quadriceps muscle force and patellofemoral joint contact force, the ratio between the patellar ligament force and quadriceps muscle force, the ratio between patellofemoral joint contact force and quadriceps muscle force, patellofemoral pressure and the anteroposterior patellar tilt. For the determination of these biomechanics parameters, dynamic radiographic images had been gotten, by means of videofluoroscopy. From the analysis of the knee joint in the sagittal plane, from twenty-five individuals, performing three repetitions of the knee extension exercise in open kinetic chain, without applied external load to the tibia. The gotten images had been reproduced and digitalized using a capture plate - Silicon Graphics 320. There been developed specific computational routines using Matlab software for processing and analysis of the data. The gotten data had been analyzed statistically using the statistical package SPSS, version 13.0. The gotten values for each parameter related to the knee angle of flexion had been plotted, for all the individuals of the sample, and carried through an regression analysis between the interpolated variables, getting respective reliable interval and coefficient of determination (r2). In the light of these findings, correlations had been verified to be strong, very strong and also very regular among the parameters of the present study and the angle of knee flexion, indicating the possibility of estimate the normality of the kinematic and kinetic parameters of the knee joint.