Controllability-based design strategy for movement/stabilization tasks

D. Despotova, P. Kiriazov, G. Nikolova

Abstract: Motor-skeletal systems of humanoids (humans or robots), are extremely complex dynamic systems and the challenging general question is how to control them efficiently and effectively in various tasks. Besides to able-bodied individuals, we pay special attention to disabled people, and we consider how to improve their motor control and efficiently restore their motion functionality. With given motion task, it is of primary importance to adequately and accurately identify the structure of the corresponding controlled system: its active and passive joints. First, a set of controlled joints that best characterize the controlled human motion in the required task has to be defined. Second, we have to find the corresponding driving forces/torques (control inputs) that mostly contributes to the dynamic performance in this task. Besides the active joints, there exist also passive joints, not being controlled by the brain, unlike the active ones. Passive elements of the human musculoskeletal system include tendons, ligaments, fasciae, cartilage, bones, skin, fixed (freezed) joints and relaxed (not activated) muscles. We give several examples to explain the basic features of our generic approach.


Series on Biomechanics, Vol.33, No. 2(2019), 18 - 24

Keywords: controllability; Multi-segmental dynamics; optimality

Date published: 2019-07-17