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Range-of-motion constraints for the human body

Range-of-motion constraints for the human body

Range-of-motion constraints for the human body

(OP)
Hi all,

Was looking for a good reference on how to parameterize range-of-motion constraints for different joints in the human body. I am mostly coming at this from a computer animation point of view, so I am mostly ignorant to biomech literature. So, I have seen a fair bit of writing about treating elbows and knees as hinges, which is kinda false. Was wondering if there are better ways to describe these joints mathematically. And then there's the whole torso and shoulder mantle. I know that the actual range a person can do varies between individuals. Just curious about a proper parameterization, and maybe a ballpark on the range.

Also, I have seen several papers that point to the following book:

"A geometric investigation of reach"
James Urey Korein
MIT Press, 1985
ISBN:0-262-11104-7

I'm leery of buying it, only because it's 25 years old and I was hoping that there were more modern treatment of his work. Does anyone know of any recent findings along these lines?

It's essentially a republication of his Ph.D. dissertation. I was hoping to find a copy of the dissertation floating around, but no go. It probably predates online PDFs :), but if anyone has seen a copy of it floating around, I would be most appreciative.

Cheers,

Dave

RE: Range-of-motion constraints for the human body

Well, the elbow and knee are hinges, but they're considerably more complex than the ones on your front door - or even car door.  The kinematics of the shoulder girdle are a bit ridiculous when you take the scapula, clavicle, and humerus combined.  

Running some searches for "range of motion" or "kinematics" into Pubmed might help, although it's tough to find numbers that are from an un-injured condition.  You could also look up some of the MIL SPEC documents, MIL-STD 1472(f) and DOD-HDBK-743(a) would be a good place to start.  

Really the human body hasn't really changed that much and I don't know that you'll find a lot of new work being done just to categorize the limits of the joints, I think it's considered settled fact.  

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