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Humans and robots frequently pick up objects. Neuroscientists try to understand how humans control the non-linear musculoskeletal system to do so, and roboticists try to design control to mimic human dexterity. Both groups of scientists tend to decompose grasping based on the characteristics of the hardware, which is clearly separated in a part for positioning the hand/gripper in space and a part for the actual griping. It is therefore generally assumed that mastering these two parts constitutes efficient control of the reach-to-grasp movement. I will argue that human motor control is not focussed on the control of the hardware, but on attaining task goals. I will present 6 experiments that show that we do not control the movement of our hand through space separately from the hand’s opening/closing. Instead, humans control the movements of the tips of the individual digits in space. This non-intuitive control scheme can be a useful source of inspiration for engineers.
Prof. dr. J. B. J. (Jeroen) Smeets (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)
Professor
Professor Smeets earned his master's ('Doctoraal') degree in Experimental Physics from Utrecht University in 1988 and his doctorate from Utrecht University in 1991; the title of his doctoral thesis was "Co-ordination in reflex control of arm movements". He worked as a postdoc in the Department of Physiology at Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam from 1991 to 1992 and was an assistant professor (UD) in the Department of Physiology at Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam from 1993 to 2002. From 2003 to 2005 he was an associate professor (UHD) in the Department of Neuroscience at Erasmus MC Rotterdam. He has been a full professor in the Faculty of Human Movement Sciences at Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam since 2006. Selected publications: Smeets, J. B. J., & Brenner, E. (1999). A new view on grasping. Motor Control, 3, 237-271. Smeets, J. B. J., van den Dobbelsteen, J. J., de Grave, D. D. J., van Beers, R. J., & Brenner, E. (2006). Sensory integration does not lead to sensory calibration. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 103, 18781-18786. Smeets, J. B. J., & Brenner, E. (2008). Grasping Weber's law. Current Biology, 18, R1089-R1090. Schot, W.D., Brenner, E., & Smeets, J.B.J. (2017). Unusual prism adaptation reveals how grasping is controlled. eLife, 6, e21440. de la Malla, C., Brenner, E., de Haan, E.H.F., Smeets, J.B.J. (2019). A visual illusion that influences perception and action through the dorsal pathway. Communications Biology, 2:38 A full list of publications can be found at: http://personal.fgb.vu.nl/~jsmeets/publications.html