Kinematics Modeling of Human Motion using System Identification
Technique
Ahmad, R., Yaacob, M.S., Che Omar, M.B.
Department of Applied Mechanics, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia
Abstract
Image processing techniques from motion captured
images are accurate and cost effective method to give a
set of data that defines the location of specified limb at
every sequence of human motion. From this set of data,
system identification was done to model the human
motion. This project is a study on how performance of
a model is influenced by the type of model whether it is
a linear model or non-linear model and a single
variable model or multi variable model. Two types of
parameter estimator was used which were the least
square estimate and recursive least square estimate.
The study also was conducted to see how the number of
lags can give effects to the model. The objective is to
formulate a predictive model to analyze human motion.
Simulation was done through the model to see the
result and performance of model whether it can be a
model for human motion representation.
1. Introduction
Walking and running are the most important and
common human movement. Developing a computer
model of the motion has been the goal of many
researches. It is a challenge to model the human
motion. Motion analysis entails measurement, analysis
and assessment of the movement features that are
associated with the walking or running task.
Significant technical and intellectual progress has been
made in the area of motion analysis over the past new
decades, especially because of the advance in
computing speed which in turn has aided the
development of more advanced movement recording
system that require less data processing time. Improved
computing speed has also made feasible and inspired
increasingly complex and innovative motion data
analysis technique [1]. This field has been studied by
many professional from varies discipline such as
science, engineering, sports or medicine. Each
discipline has own research interests and motivations
of study. An example where work in this area can be
used is biomechanics field include a gait pattern
classification and recognition task including
categorization of normal and pathological gaits. The
field of human motion study can be divided into two
sections; kinematics and kinetics. In this project, only
the kinematics motion of lower limbs was studied.
Kinematics describes the pattern and temporal aspects
of motion such as positions, angles, velocities, and
accelerations of body segments and joints during
motion [2]. It is the study of body motion without
reference to the forces that causes the motion. The
objectives of this project are:
1. To apply the video digitizing and image
processing technique with capability to capture
images of real human motion (two dimensional)
and process the images to give a set of data that
defines limbs location at each sequence of the
motion.
2. To determine a good model structure and
parameter estimation method that gives adequate
and high predictive model of human motion.
3. To simulate the human motion model.
Other methods that available for human motion
data acquisition are footswitches, gait mats,
goniometer, accelerometer or magnetic tracking system
[3].
Rezaul et al. [4] control of limb movements using a
kinematics movement plan by artificial neural network.
It used a model of feed-forward neural network where
the input consisted of kinematics profiles of the lower
limb and the individual muscle activations formed the
output vectors. However, data acquisition method was
not mentioned. Kinematics and muscle activity data is
from a total of eleven different walking conditions.
This paper is organized as follows. In the second
section, it is an overview of human motion and the data
acquisition technique that has been conducted. The
third section is a discussion about the system
identification while the fourth section is the discussion
about the developed model of human motion. The final
Second Asia International Conference on Modelling & Simulation
978-0-7695-3136-6/08 $25.00 © 2008 IEEE
DOI 10.1109/AMS.2008.178
338