For robotic systems to interact with or learn from the actions of surrounding humans, it is important that they can accurately interpret the intention driving human motor actions. Making such interpretations, however, requires the ability to perceive the relevant feature(s) from the observed human behavior. With visual sensing alone, robots are typically limited to perceiving only the human’s overt motion in the form of joint angles and positions. Ideally, robots designed to interface with humans would also be able to infer information as to how the human is controlling itself from that overt motion. In this project, we are investigating if and how humans might be able to extract information regarding how humans control limb mechanical impedance from kinematic information.

 

Dr. Meghan Huber