Approximating Constrained Hand Paths Via Kinematic Synthesis with Contact Specifications

Abstract

This chapter presents part of our recent efforts in developing computational models of human motor coordination with reduced mobility. A recently developed kinematic synthesis is implemented to approximate natural human hand profiles with an elbow joint constraint. The constraint condition holds the hand on a spherical workspace centered at the shoulder. The assumption that the hand is in contact with the surface during the entire movement, allows us to describe the contact condition by using higher order kinematic constraints such as velocities and accelerations. By adopting contact specifications at an initial and a final task positions, kinematic synthesis and path planning techniques enable us to generate an entire hand path connecting the two positions. It was found that the proposed method closely approximates an actual human hand path, obtained experimentally.