Modeling and simulation of complex dynamic musculoskeletal architectures

Xiaotian Zhang,Mattia Gazzola,Tejaswin Parthasarathy,Fan Kiat Chan

doi:10.1038/s41467-019-12759-5

Abstract

Natural creatures, from fish and cephalopods to snakes and birds, combine neural control, sensory feedback and compliant mechanics to effectively operate across dynamic, uncertain environments. In order to facilitate the understanding of the biophysical mechanisms at play and to streamline their potential use in engineering applications, we present here a versatile numerical approach to the simulation of musculoskeletal architectures. It relies on the assembly of heterogenous, active and passive Cosserat rods into dynamic structures that model bones, tendons, ligaments, fibers and muscle connectivity. We demonstrate its utility in a range of problems involving biological and soft robotic scenarios across scales and environments: from the engineering of millimeter-long bio-hybrid robots to the synthesis and reconstruction of complex musculoskeletal systems. The versatility of this methodology offers a framework to aid forward and inverse bioengineering designs as well as fundamental discovery in the functioning of living organisms.

Highlights

Natural creatures, from fish and cephalopods to snakes and birds, combine neural control, sensory feedback and compliant mechanics to effectively operate across dynamic, uncertain environments
We first consider the human elbow joint comprised of muscles, tendons and bones (Fig. 1a) to illustrate how rod assemblies are mapped to physiology, dynamics, and morphology
We have presented a methodology based on the assembly of heterogeneous, active and passive Cosserat rods for the simulation of dynamic musculoskeletal architectures that can undergo all modes of deformation

Summary

Introduction

From fish and cephalopods to snakes and birds, combine neural control, sensory feedback and compliant mechanics to effectively operate across dynamic, uncertain environments. A radically new breed of soft bio-hybrid robots[3,20,21,22,23,24] that combine biological muscles and sensors with artificial scaffolds has been emerging, paving the way to engineer living machines with unique abilities of self-assembly, healing, growth and adaptivity This technology carries the promise of high impact applications, from biomedicine to manufacturing[25], and of fundamental discovery as it provides a platform to test hypotheses related to the functioning of living organisms[26]. These approaches are specialized to scenarios in which shear, stretch, and/or twist and dynamic effects are unimportant

Methods

Results

Conclusion