A dynamic human motion: coordination analysis

This article is concerned with the generic structure of the motion coordination system resulting from the application of the method of virtual holonomic constraints (VHCs) to the problem of the generation and robust execution of a dynamic humanlike motion by a humanoid robot. The motion coordination developed using VHCs is based on a motion generator equation, which is a scalar nonlinear differential equation of second order. It can be considered equivalent in function to a central pattern generator in living organisms. The relative time evolution of the degrees of freedom of a humanoid robot during a typical motion are specified by a set of coordination functions that uniquely define the overall pattern of the motion. This is comparable to a hypothesis on the existence of motion patterns in biomechanics. A robust control is derived based on a transverse linearization along the configuration manifold defined by the coordination functions. It is shown that the derived coordination and control architecture possesses excellent robustness properties. The analysis is performed on an example of a real human motion recorded in test experiments.