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Computational
motor control, is the quantitative study of the biological motor control
system. We employ engineering tools
to understand how the brain controls movements with applications to science
technology and rehabilitation.
Biological
motor control presents a great challenge for scientists and engineers.
"Simple" tasks such as playing with a ball are much more
difficult for artificial machines than many "intelligent" tasks
such as playing a game of Chess.
The broad target of our
research is to reveal the secrets of brain by building a model of its
operation, and examining its properties with analytical tools as well as
numerical simulations. Three different reasons motivate this research: the
patient, the robot and the brain.
- Paralyzed patients can
improve their quality of life by an artificial limb or external
stimulation of their muscles. In order to design these aids, one needs
a model of the biological motor control system.
- Robots are inferior to
people and animals in many aspects. One of the promising directions to
improve our technology is by imitating nature and learning from its
ingenious solutions.
- The main outputs of the
nervous system are the muscles, and motor control is the salient
evolutionary drive for the development of the brain. Therefor the act
of modeling and understanding the motor control system can be
symbolized as polishing the window to the secrets of the brain.
The Computational Motor Control Laboratory (CMCL) of Dr.
Karniel was established in 2004 with start-up funds provided by Ben-Gurion University
of the Negev (BGU) and by the Zlotowski
Center for
Neuroscience at BGU. Since its founding, the CMCL has been operated with funds
from the BSF, the National Institute of Psychobiology in Israel, the Ministry of Science
Culture and Sport through a French-Israel collaboration and the Israel
Science Foundation. The laboratory extends over 60 m2
and includes workstations, a Reachin/Sensegraphics system of an augmented
reality with phantom desktop manipulanda, a MiniBIRD system for magnetic
tracking with four sensors, and a video conference system.
Check the following links for further details about
People
Research
Publication List
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