Analysis of musculoskeletal systems in the AnyBody Modeling System

This paper reviews the simulation software the AnyBody Modeling System, which was originally developed by the authors. AnyBody is capable of analyzing the musculoskeletal system of humans or other creatures as rigid-body systems. The paper introduces the main features of the system; in particular, the inverse dynamic analysis that resolves the fundamental indeterminacy of the muscle configuration. In addition to the musculoskeletal system, a model can comprise external objects, loads, and motion specifications, thereby providing a complete set of the boundary conditions for a given task. The paper also describes the basic ideas of structured model development in AnyBody.