Modeling control adaptations during recovery from anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction

In this paper, we aim to model a functional task affected by injury, along with the corresponding neuromuscular compensation strategy, in order to understand differences in task performance during recovery from the injury. This study is motivated by differing rates of functional task improvements during recovery from anterior cruciate ligament repair. In particular, clinical studies have shown faster recovery times for single-limb forward hopping versus single-limb crossover hopping (hopping back and forth laterally while moving forward). Modeling this hopping task will help us understand whether the main factor of the differing functional results is from the physical restrictions of the injury, the compensation strategies used to overcome these restrictions, or a combination of both. Our hypothesis is that the discrepancies in clinical functional results will be reproduced by employing a feedforward compensation strategy, where the compensation is learned and adjusted over time.