Converting Biomechanical Models from OpenSim to MuJoCo

Abstract

OpenSim is a widely used biomechanics simulator with several anatomically accurate human musculo-skeletal models. While OpenSim provides useful tools to analyse human movement, it is not fast enough to be routinely used for emerging research directions, e.g., learning and simulating motor control through deep neural networks and Reinforcement Learning (RL). We propose a framework for converting OpenSim models to MuJoCo, the de facto simulator in machine learning research, which itself lacks accurate musculo-skeletal human models. We show that with a few simple approximations of anatomical details, an OpenSim model can be automatically converted to a MuJoCo version that runs up to 600 times faster. We also demonstrate an approach to computationally optimize MuJoCo model parameters so that forward simulations of both simulators produce similar results.