yeadon 1.2.0

Estimates the inertial properties of a human.

yeadon

This package calculates the masses, center of mass positions, and inertia tensors that correspond to the human inertia model developed by Yeadon in (Yeadon, 1990). The package allows for the input of both measurements and configuration variables (joint angles), and provides 3D visualization using the MayaVi package. See the online documentation at http://yeadon.readthedocs.org/.

References

M. R. Yeadon, 1990. The Simulation of Aerial Movement-ii. Mathematical Inertia Model of the Human Body. Journal of Biomechanics, 23:67-74.

Directories

• yeadon/ contains the python source files for the yeadon package.
• doc/ contains source documents for building sphinx documentation.
• misc/ contains figures and template input files.
• misc/samplemeasurements/ contains sample measurement input files.

Installing

This package was developed in Python 2.7.

Dependencies

yeadon depends on the following widely-used packages:

• setuptools for installation
• NumPy for computations
• PyYAML for parsing input files

The following packages are optional:

• MayaVi for visualization and GUI interaction
• nose for tests
• Sphinx to create documentation
• numpydoc Sphinx extension for NumPy-style documentation formatting

Getting the dependencies

Option 1: Scientific python distributions

Most scientific python distributions provide all of these dependencies and it is often easiest to install one of them to get started. Once you have a distribution, you simply need to install the yeadon package. This is the best solution for Windows users.

Option 2: Operating system package manager

In some operating systems, the dependencies can also be obtained from the operating system’s package manager. For example, in Debian systems, you should be able to obtain all of these packages by opening a terminal window and typing:

$ # prepend sudo to each line below if you desire a system install
$ apt-get install python-setuptools python-numpy python-yaml # required
$ apt-get install python-nose python-sphinx mayavi2 # optional packages
$ easy_install numpydoc # this package is not in the Debian repositories

For other operating systems (e.g. Windows or Mac), visit the websites for the packages for installation instructions.

Option 3: Building dependencies from source

This option is required if you want to use yeadon in a virtualenv. You can build the dependencies from source and then install them by using a tool like pip:

$ easy_install pip
$ pip install numpy PyYAML
$ pip install nose sphinx mayavi
$ pip install numpydoc

or you can obtain the source code, perhaps from GitHub, and install the packages manually.

Getting yeadon

Once you’ve obtained the dependencies, you can install yeadon. The easiest way to download and install the yeadon package is by using a tool like pip to obtain the package from the Python Package Index (PyPi):

$ easy_install pip
$ pip install yeadon # sudo if system install

You can also obtain an archive of the package at the Python Package Index (https://pypi.python.org/pypi/yeadon), and then install the package on your own by executing the following from the root directory of the package:

$ python setup.py install # sudo if system install

On Unix, you can obtain the package source code and install it without leaving your terminal:

$ # change X.X.X to the desired version
$ wget https://pypi.python.org/packages/source/y/yeadon/yeadon-X.X.X.tar.gz
$ tar -zxfv yeadon-X.X.X.tar.gz
$ cd yeadon-X.X.X.tar.gz
$ python setup.py install # sudo if system install

Both of these options assume that the version of your default Python interpreter is 2.7.

Run the tests with:

$ python setup.py nosetests

Building the documentation

You can build the yeadon HTML documentation if you have Sphinx by typing the following from the root directory of the yeadon source files:

$ cd doc/
$ make html

You can open the documentation in your favorite web browser:

$ firefox _build/html/index.html

If you have a LaTeX distribution installed you can build the LaTeX docs with:

$ cd doc/
$ make latexpdf

and view the document with your preferred PDF viewer:

$ evince _build/latex/yeadon.pdf

Note that to generate documentation, one also needs the numpydoc package. Alternatively, one can just access the documentation through the PyPi site.

Usage

Once the package is installed you can start the program with:

$ yeadon

If you have MayaVi installed, the GUI will launch. If you don’t, the text based UI will launch. You can explicitly specify whether you want to load the GUI or the UI with command-line flags:

$ yeadon --gui
$ yeadon --ui

You can also interact with yeadon in a Python interpreter session or Python script/module via the API by importing the package. For example:

$ python
>>> import yeadon

Now you can create a human object with:

>>> human = yeadon.Human(<measfilename>, <CFGfilename>)

where <measfilename> and <CFGfilename> are replaced by strings that contain a relative or absolute path to the appropriate input .txt files. For more basics on how to use a Human object, you can go into a python command prompt and type:

>>> help(yeadon.Human)

or see the documentation.

You can also start the UI or the GUI from within a Python interpreter by executing:

>>> yeadon.start_ui()

or:

>>> yeadon.start_gui()

See the documentation for more information.

Contact

Feel free to contact Chris Dembia (chris530d, gmail) with any questions or comments.

All development is handled at http://github.com/chrisdembia/yeadon, including issue tracking.