Biomechanics of Bodies: ​BoB

Biomechanics of Bodies (​BoB) is a biomechanical modelling package that contains a human musculoskeletal model.  BoB enables the calculation of muscle forces and joint contact loads, ground reaction forces, the calculation of anatomical trajectories, centre of mass trajectories, together with a muscle editor and extensive visualisation capabilities.  

​BoB has been downloaded by over 400 research and commercial organisations worldwide.

Applications of BoB
BoB allows universities, colleges, research institutes, healthcare professionals and industrial designers to record real-time data for analysis in athletic performance, sports equipment design, consumer product design, litigation including industrial injuries and manual handling, non-life critical healthcare and much more.
 
FEATURES
​BoB is the leading musculoskeletal analysis package developed in MATLAB and inherits many of MATLAB's features including manipulation of plots and large data handling.  Also, all of BoB's stored data files can be directly accessed by MATLAB.  BoB is accredited by the MathWorks Connections Program. 

BoB features include:
   Easy data importing from
          - C3D (e.g. Vicon / CodaMotion / Qualisys / BTS)
          - HPF from Delsys
          - MVNx from Xsens
          - calc from Perception Neuron
          - BVH from Rokoko and others
          - Text file
          - User defined equations
    User editable skeleton and muscle models
    Default muscle model contains over 600 locomotor muscle units
    Short learning curve makes BoB ideal for teaching
    Advanced analysis capability makes BoB ideal for research
    Close integration with MATLAB data and processing
    Easy data exchange with MATLAB
    User defined MATLAB Handle Graphics scripts
    Extensive graphics display features
    Calculation of ground reaction forces
    Calculation of joint torques
    Calculation of muscle forces, length and velocities
    Calculation of joint contact forces
    Calculation of centre of mass
    Output of tabulated data, images and videos
    Synchronised EMG display
    Synchronised video display
 
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SPECIFICATIONS
BoB requires Windows 7 or later and 750Mb free disc space.
Minimum specification:
Any Intel or AMD x86-64 processor with four logical cores and AVX2 instruction set support.  
​Hardware accelerated graphics card supporting OpenGL 3.3 with 1GB GPU memory.
Recommended specification:
9th generation Intel Core i7 (12Mb cache, 4.5GHz)
16Gb, DDR4, 2666MHz RAM
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 6Gb GDDR6 graphics card.
 
 
APPLICATIONS
Sports Performance
Performance analysis focuses on the understanding of the musculoskeletal system to enable a person to improve their sports performance or avoid injuries. It is also an invaluable tool for the sports coach to better provide quantitative feedback on the joint contact forces, joint torques, velocities and forces within the muscles of the whole body during any movement and provides an objective comparison of athletes of differing abilities.
Watch video: the forces in the muscles of the baseball pitcher and hitter.

Sports Equipment Development
​BoB can model the interaction between the athlete and their equipment to provide the equipment designer with the information required to optimise the design. As well as providing analysis of the interaction between the athlete and sports equipment, the equipment itself can be analysed to identify its optimum configuration or to facilitate its re-design.

EMG analysis
BoB can display EMG signals synchronised to the corresponding movement. Additionally, the activation of the muscles can be colour coded based based on the EMG signals.
 
Healthcare
BoB can provide quantitative information on the forces and torques occurring within the bones, joints and muscles of subjects during any activity.   BoB can also analyse the energy and power generated by a subject on a whole-body and individual muscle basis.
 
Manual Handling
BoB can provide objective data on the performance of subjects undertaking a broad range of manual handling tasks providing information on required joint torques and muscle activity.
 
Ergonomics and Human factors
BoB can model the subject within their working environment and any object within that environment to optimise the user’s comfort and performance - analysing the co-ordination of movements within a team and the performance of an individual.

Product Development
BoB can be used during the conceptual design phase, prior to hardware being available, to assess the human/machine interface and later in the development process to optimise the design solution.
 
Automotive
BoB can analyse movements at any stage of the driving experience from ingress/egress to safe operation and crash analysis.
 
Research
BoB is currently being used in a broad range of academic research projects from archaeology to zoology; indeed any situation which involves human motion is suitable for analysis by BoB.
Watch video: the movement of the centre of mass for ballet dancers.
 
Gerontology
Care of the older person is a social necessity and BoB can provide valuable information on the demands placed on the elderly during daily life or exceptional events.
 
Motion Capture
BoB can read motion capture data produced in the c3d format, .calc files from Perception Neuron, .mvnx files from Xsens and csv files of marker motions.
BoB can also display motion captured data synchronised to a video.