Movement is fundamental to human and animal life, emerging through interaction of complex neural, muscular, and skeletal systems. Study of movement draws from and contributes to diverse fields, including biology, neuroscience, mechanics, and robotics. OpenSim unites methods from these fields to create fast and accurate simulations of movement, enabling two fundamental tasks. First, the software can calculate variables that are difficult to measure experimentally, such as the forces generated by muscles and the stretch and recoil of tendons during movement. Second, OpenSim can predict novel movements from models of motor control, such as kinematic adaptations of human gait during loaded or inclined walking. Changes in musculoskeletal dynamics following surgery or due to human–device interaction can also be simulated; these simulations have played a vital role in several applications, including the design of implantable mechanical devices to improve human grasping in individuals with paralysis. OpenSim is an extensible and user-friendly software package built on decades of knowledge about computational modeling and simulation of biomechanical systems. OpenSim’s design enables computational scientists to create new state-of-the-art software tools and empowers others to use these tools in research and clinical applications. OpenSim supports a large and growing community of biomechanics and rehabilitation researchers, facilitating exchange of models and simulations for reproducing and extending discoveries. Examples, tutorials, documentation, and an active user forum support this community. The OpenSim software is covered by the Apache License 2.0, which permits its use for any purpose including both nonprofit and commercial applications. The source code is freely and anonymously accessible on GitHub, where the community is welcomed to make contributions. Platform-specific installers of OpenSim include a GUI and are available on simtk.org.

Muscles actuate running by developing forces that propel the body forward while supporting the body's weight. To understand how muscles contribute to propulsion (i.e., forward acceleration of the mass center) and support (i.e., upward acceleration of the mass center) during running we developed a three-dimensional muscle-actuated simulation of the running gait cycle. The simulation is driven by 92 musculotendon actuators of the lower extremities and torso and includes the dynamics of arm motion. We analyzed the simulation to determine how each muscle contributed to the acceleration of the body mass center. During the early part of the stance phase, the quadriceps muscle group was the largest contributor to braking (i.e., backward acceleration of the mass center) and support. During the second half of the stance phase, the soleus and gastrocnemius muscles were the greatest contributors to propulsion and support. The arms did not contribute substantially to either propulsion or support, generating less than 1% of the peak mass center acceleration. However, the arms effectively counterbalanced the vertical angular momentum of the lower extremities. Our analysis reveals that the quadriceps and plantarflexors are the major contributors to acceleration of the body mass center during running.

SUMMARYThe lengths and velocities of muscle fibers have a dramatic effect on muscle force generation. It is unknown, however, whether the lengths and velocities of lower limb muscle fibers substantially affect the ability of muscles to generate force during walking and running. We examined this issue by developing simulations of muscle-tendon dynamics to calculate the lengths and velocities of muscle fibers from electromyographic recordings of 11 lower limb muscles and kinematic measurements of the hip, knee and ankle made as five subjects walked at speeds of 1.0-1.75ms-1 and ran at speeds of 2.0-5.0ms. We analyzed the simulated fiber lengths, fiber velocities and forces to evaluate the influence of force-length and force-velocity properties on force generation at different walking and running speeds. The simulations revealed that force generation ability (i.e. the force generated per unit of activation) of eight of the 11 muscles was significantly affected by walking or running speed. Soleus force generation ability decreased with increasing walking speed, but the transition from walking to running increased the force generation ability by reducing fiber velocities. Our results demonstrate the influence of soleus muscle architecture on the walk-to-run transition and the effects of muscle-tendon compliance on the plantarflexorsʼ ability to generate ankle moment and power. The study presents data that permit lower limb muscles to be studied in unprecedented detail by relating muscle fiber dynamics and force generation to the mechanical demands of walking and running.Supplementary material available online at

Running is a bouncing gait in which the body mass center slows and lowers during the first half of the stance phase; the mass center is then accelerated forward and upward into flight during the second half of the stance phase. Muscle-driven simulations can be analyzed to determine how muscle forces accelerate the body mass center. However, muscle-driven simulations of running at different speeds have not been previously developed, and it remains unclear how muscle forces modulate mass center accelerations at different running speeds. Thus, to examine how muscles generate accelerations of the body mass center, we created three-dimensional muscle-driven simulations of ten subjects running at 2.0, 3.0, 4.0, and 5.0 m/s. An induced acceleration analysis determined the contribution of each muscle to mass center accelerations. Our simulations included arms, allowing us to investigate the contributions of arm motion to running dynamics. Analysis of the simulations revealed that soleus provides the greatest upward mass center acceleration at all running speeds; soleus generates a peak upward acceleration of 19.8 m/s2 (i.e., the equivalent of approximately 2.0 bodyweights of ground reaction force) at 5.0 m/s. Soleus also provided the greatest contribution to forward mass center acceleration, which increased from 2.5 m/s2 at 2.0 m/s to 4.0 m/s2 at 5.0 m/s. At faster running speeds, greater velocity of the legs produced larger angular momentum about the vertical axis passing through the body mass center; angular momentum about this vertical axis from arm swing simultaneously increased to counterbalance the legs. We provide open-access to data and simulations from this study for further analysis in OpenSim at simtk.org/home/nmbl_running, enabling muscle actions during running to be studied in unprecedented detail.

We present a technique for automatically synthesizing walking and running controllers for physically-simulated 3D humanoid characters. The sagittal hip, knee, and ankle degrees-of-freedom are actuated using a set of eight Hill-type musculotendon models in each leg, with biologically-motivated control laws. The parameters of these control laws are set by an optimization procedure that satisfies a number of locomotion task terms while minimizing a biological model of metabolic energy expenditure. We show that the use of biologically-based actuators and objectives measurably increases the realism of gaits generated by locomotion controllers that operate without the use of motion capture data, and that metabolic energy expenditure provides a simple and unifying measurement of effort that can be used for both walking and running control optimization.