The goal of this work was to augment the capability of the currently most widely used full-body model (Rajagopal) to improve the tracking of the kinematics of the head, shoulder, arms and torso during complex/coordinated full-body motions, such as cutting maneuvers in Football. We achieved this goal by adding 3 joints in the spine and 2 joints between clavicles and sternum based on the existing models of various body segments (Vasavada, Li et al. 1998, Saul, Hu et al. 2014).
We tested the model by comparing the inverse kinematics and inverse dynamics from specific movements often involved in American football games from 16 collegiate football players based on the augmented full-body model vs. the original full-body model (Rajagopal, Dembia et al. 2016). These comparisons showed a significant improvement in tracking the kinematics of the upper body, which then led to reduced dynamic inconsistency in inverse dynamics, in the augmented full-body model.