Determination of human energy generated by skeletal muscle

Abstract

In order to analyse the mechanical interaction between human arm and manual control device for the design of optimized physical man-machine interfaces, a method of determination of energy expenditure by the muscle system of a human arm acting on the device is presented. This energy is considered as a physical and measurable quantity, and can be used to evaluate the performance of a mechanical man-machine interface. For this, a musculo-mechanical model of the human arm is described for the determination of muscle energy. An example of human joint torques and energy calculation applied to a 2D biomechanical human arm suitable for simulation purpose is analytically given.