Musculo-Skeletal Models as Tools to Quantify Embodiment

Human and animal movement is absolutely fascinating and can hardly be mimicked by technical devices, so far. It has been proposed that part of the movement generation and control can be associated to the non-linear characteristics of the bio-mechanical structures and morphology. Terms like morphological computation (Paul, 2006) and intelligence by mechanics (Blickhan et al., 2007) capture this idea. Musculo-skeletal models allow to synthesize biological movements based on models representing the non-linear characteristics of muscles, tendons, ligaments, and other bio-mechanical structures. This approach allows for studying the contribution of these structures and, thus, their role in the control of human and animal movements.