Muscle-Induced Accelerations of Body Segments

근육의 힘이 신체 각 부분의 가속도에 미치는 영향

When the functional electrical stimulation is employed to recover mobility to the plegic, it is very important to understand functions of the selected muscles. I have investigated how a muscle acts to accelerate the body segments, since the body segements are connected by joints so that contraction of a muscle not only rotates the segments to which it is attached but also causes other segments to rotate by creation a reaction force at every joint, which is called the inertial coupling. I found that a single-joint muscle always acts to accelerate the spanned joint in the same direction as the joint torque produced by the muscle. However, a double-joint muscle can act to accelerate the spanned joint in the opposite direction to the joint torque produced by the muscle depending on (1) the body position, (2) the body-segmental parameters, and (3) the type of the movement. Investigating the condition number of the inertia matrix of the body-segmental model gave us some insights into how controllable the body-segmental system is for different values of the factors mentioned above. The results suggested that the upright position is the most undesirable position to independently control the three segments(trunk, thigh and shank) and that the controllability is the most sensitive to variation of the shank length and the trunk mass, which implies that accuracy is required particularly when we estimate these two body-segmental parameters before the paralyzed muscles are innervated by using electrical stimulation.

본 연구에서는 근육수축에 의해 발생되는 각 신체부분의 각가속도의 방향이 다음 두가지 요소의 변화에 따라 어떻게 달라지는가를 중점적으로 살펴보기로 한다` (1) 신체매개변수(body-segmental parameter): 길이, 무게 등, (2) 신체 각 부분의 위치. 이러한 상관관계를 더욱 명확히 이해함으로써, 주어진 운동(given task)을 FES 에 의해 수행하고자 할 때 전기적으로 자극되어야 할 근육을 사전에 선택할 수 있을 것이다.