Movement control in biologically plausible frames of reference

Abstract:
Biological findings suggest that human movement is encoded in a variety of action-oriented reference frames. In contrast, robotics movement control is mostly formulated in traditional frames of reference, such as the world frame, or a robotfixed base frame. In this contribution, we will investigate these biological findings and propose a movement control formulation for redundant robots that are equipped with one or several effectors. We will show that describing and controlling movement in action oriented reference frames yields significant advantages, such as higher invariance and generalization capabilities, better movement quality, and a more intuitive understanding. Controlling movement in action oriented reference frames leads to a very natural looking movements, resembling very much the characteristics of human motion.