Nili Krausz

Abstract:
The inverse kinematics (IK) problem addresses how both humans and robotic systems coordinate movement to resolve redundancy, as in the case of arm reaching where more degrees of freedom are available at the joint versus hand level. This work focuses on which coordinate frames best represent human movements, enabling the motor system to solve the IK problem in the presence of kinematic redundancies. Using a multi-dimensional sparse source separation method to derive sets of basis (or source) functions for both the task and joint spaces, with joint space represented by either absolute or anatomical joint angles, the researchers assessed similarities between joint and task sources in each of these joint representations, finding that the time-dependent profiles of the absolute reference frame’s sources show greater similarity to corresponding sources in the task space. This result was found to be statistically significant.