Prediciting ground reaction forces from markerless 3D motion tracking

The accuracy of a physics-based approach to predicting ground reaction forces (GRF) and centre of pressure (COP) during a diverse range of activities using only markerless 3D motion tracking was assessed.
` `

A diverse range of activities, including walking, running, jumping and change of direction, was examined. The body segment positions throughout these movements were captured with a commercial markerless 3D motion tracking system and force plates. The resulting centre of mass trajectories from the motion capture were used to derive the theoretically required GRFs. These predicted GRFs were then compared against those measured with the force plates.
` `
Results showed that the physics-based approach used here was capable of predicting 95-99% of the variance in peak GRFs across all axes and movements.