On Configuration Trajectory Formation in Spatiotemporal Profile for Reproducing Human Hand Reaching Movement

Most functional reaching activities in daily living generally require a hand to reach the functional position in appropriate orientation with invariant spatiotemporal profile. Effectively reproducing such spatiotemporal feature of hand configuration trajectory in real time is essential to understand the human motor control and plan human-like motion on anthropomorphic robotic arm. However, there are no novel computational models in literature toward reproducing hand configuration-to-configuration movement in spatiotemporal profile. In response to the problem, this paper presents a computational framework for hand configuration trajectory formation based on hierarchical principle of human motor control. The composite potential field is constructed on special Euclidean Group to induce time-varying configuration toward target. The dynamic behavior of hand is described by a second-order kinematic model to produce the external representation of high-level motor control. The multivariate regression relation between intrinsic and extrinsic coordinates of arm, is statistically analyzed for determining the arm orientation in real time, which produces the external representation of low-level motor control. The proposed method is demonstrated in an anthropomorphic arm by performing several highly curved self-reaching movements. The generated configuration trajectories are compared with actual human movement in spatiotemporal profile to validate the proposed method.