Introduction to Human Biomechanics (open textbook)

This is an open textbook containing lessons regarding a variety of fundamental biomechanics concepts.

(Updated 2022-04-04)

Overall goals:

• Find and explore human movement data
• Create figures and animations portraying various aspects of human movement
• Describe human movement using basic anatomical and mechanical principles

Main Topics:

• Anatomy
• Kinematics
• Motion Capture
• Kinematic Chains
• Dynamics

Specific learning goals:

• Describe human movement using basic anatomical terminology
• Understand the difference between linear and angular kinematics
• Understand why 3D angular kinematics are highly complex
• Understand the basics of motion capture technology, and how it can be used to record human movement
• Explore human movement data in a variety of file formats
• Understand different methods of presenting human movement data
• Understand the differences between forward and inverse kinematics for kinematic chains
• Understand the basics of dynamics, and how forces relate to human movement
• Understand the basics of how muscles produce forces

Repository contents:

• Chapters:     HTML files containing static chapter renderings
  • If you are uninterested in software details, none of the other respository contents are needed
• References:     Software overview and collection of external links
• Tutorials:     Basic tutorials for getting started with software
• src:     Source code for generating the Chapters and References contents

Software:

The following software was used to generate this open book's content:

• Jupyter (for Python3)
• Blender

License: GPL Version 3 (see the "LICENSE" file for details.)

© Todd Pataky, 2022