Contactless motion analysis system using a kinect and musculoskeletal model

This paper proposes a contactless motion analysis method that estimates muscle activity using a musculoskeletal model and a Kinect^TM. The muscle activity is estimated by inputting the estimated ground reaction force (GRF) during walking into the musculoskeletal model; here, the GRF is estimated based on the skeletal joint information obtained by the Kinect. As a result, an estimation of the muscle activity pattern that is equivalent to the surface electromyogram is obtained. In the future, contactless estimation of muscle activity in a subject should be possible using the proposed method for human motion analysis.