Development of Simple Articulated Human Models using Superquadrics for Dynamic Analysis

Objective: This study is aimed at developing Articulated Human Models(AHM) using superquadrics to improve the geometric accuracy of the body shape. Background: The previous work presents the AHM with geometrical simplification such as ellipsoids to improve analysis efficiency. However, because of the simplicity, their physical properties such as a center of mass and moment of inertia are computed with errors compared to their actual values. Method: This paper introduces a three steps method to present the AHM with superquadrics. First, a 3D whole body scan data are divided into 17 body segments according to body joints. Second, superquadric fitting is employed to minimize the Euclidean distance between body segments and superquadrics. Finally, Fee-Form Deformation is used to improve accuracy over superquadric fitting. Results: Our computational experiment shows that the superquadric models give better accuracy of dynamic analysis than that of ellipsoid ones. Conclusion: We generate the AHM composed of 17 superquadrics and 16 joints using superquadric fitting. Application: The AHM using superquadrics can be used as the base model for dynamics and ergonomics applications with better accuracy because it presents the human motion effectively.