A Two-Way Model for Motor Control of Redundant Systems

Amir Karniel, Ron Meir, and Gideon F. Inbar

World Congress on Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering (WC2000) Chicago, IL, July 23-28, 2000

 

Abstract - The biological motor control system is an adaptive system exhibiting vast redundancy at all its hierarchical levels.  Redundancy improves reliability and flexibility and might be the salient reason for the superb dexterity of human motor control.  However, introducing redundancy in an inversely controlled object results in an ill-posed problem.
We describe a general two-way model for redundancy control.  This model includes the selection of a single solution by the dynamics of the system at the lower level, and a multiple controller that can use different solutions under different circumstances at the higher level.  We demonstrate the role of the system dynamics in facilitating the stereotypical features of rapid movements, and suggest an architecture as well as a theoretical framework for many-to-one function approximation and inversion.

Key words – Inverse problem, Redundancy, Multiple controller, Rapid movements, Motor control
 
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