Abstract
The present paper examines human hand impedance characteristics, including inertia and viscosity as well as stiffness, in multi-joint arm movements. While a subject maintains a given hand location, small external disturbances are applied to his hand by a manipulandum. The corresponding force-displacement vectors are measured and sampled over time in order to estimate the hand impedance by means of a second-order linear model. The experimental results in different subjects and hand locations are summarized as follows: (1) the estimated inertia matrices of the human hand well agrees with computed values using a twojoint arm model, (2) spatial variations of the stiffness ellipses are consistent with the experimental results of Mussa-Ivaldi et al. (1985), (3) hand stiffness and viscosity increase with the grip force of the subject, and (4) viscosity and stiffness ellipses tend to have similar orientation. The accuracy of the impedance estimation method is validated with a mechanical spring-mass system with known parameters.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Asada H, Slotine JJ (1986) Robot analysis and control. Wiley, New York
Bennett DJ, Hollerbach JM, Xu Y, Hunter IW (1992) Time varying stiffness of human elbow joint during cyclic voluntary movement. Exp Brain Res 88: 433–442
Bizzi E, Accornero N, Chapple W, Hogan N (1984) Posture control and trajectory formation during arm movement. J Neurosci 4: 2738–2744
Bullock D, Grossberg (1989) S VITE and FLETE: neural modules for trajectory formation and postural control. In: Hershberger W (ed) Volitional action. North-Holland, Amsterdam, pp 253–297
Cannon S, Zahalak GI (1982) The mechanical behavior of active human skeletal muscles in small oscillations. J Biomech 15: 111–121
Dolan JM, Friedman MB, Nagurka ML (1993) Dynamic and loaded impedance components in the maintenance of human arm posture. IEEE Trans Syst Man Cybern 23: 698–709
Flash T (1987) The control of hand equilibrium trajectories in multijoint arm movement. Biol Cybern 57: 257–274
Flash T, Hogan N (1985) The coordination of arm movements: an experimentally confirmed mathematical model. J Neurosci 5: 1688–1703
Flash T, Mussa-Ivaldi FA (1990) Human arm stiffness characteristics during maintenance of posture. Exp Brain Res 82: 315–326
Gomi H, Koike Y, Kawato M (1992a) Measurement of the stiffness during multi-joint arm movement. Technical report of Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers NC91-145: 99–106 (in Japanese)
Gomi H, Koike Y, Kawato M (1992b) Human hand stiffness during discrete point-to-point multijoint movement. Proceedings of the Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, pp 1628–1629
Hogan N (1984) An organizing principle for a class of voluntary movements. J Neurosci 4: 2745–2754
Hogan N (1985) The mechanics of multi-joint posture and movement control. Biol Cybern 53: 1–17
Katayama M, Kawato M (1991a) Parallel-hierarchical neural network model for motor control of musculoskeletal system. Systems and Computers in Japan, Scripta Technica Inc 22: 95–105
Katayama M, Kawato M (1991b) Virtual trajectory and stiffness ellipse during force-trajectory control using a parallel-hierarchical neural network model. Fifth International Conference on Advanced Robotics, pp 1187–1194
Katayama M, Kawato M (1993) Virtual trajectory and stiffness ellipse during multi-joint arm movement predicted by neural inverse models. Biol Cybern 69: 353–362
Kawato M, Furukawa K, Suzuki R (1987) A hierarchical neuralnetwork model for control and learning of voluntary movement. Biol Cybern 57: 169–185
Lacquaniti F, Licata F, Soechting JF (1982) The mechanical behavior of the human forearm in response to transient perturbations. Biol Cybern 44: 35–46
MacKay WA, Crammond DJ, Kwan HC, Murphy JT (1986) Measurements of human forearm viscoelasticity. J Biomech 19: 231–238
Milner TE (1993) Dependence of elbow viscoelastic behavior on speed and loading in voluntary movements. Exp Brain Res 93: 177–180
Morasso P, Sanguineti V (1992) SOBoS — a self-organizing body schema. In: Aleksander I, Taylor J (eds) Artificial neural networks. North-Holland, Amsterdam, pp 487–490
Morasso P, Sanguineti V, Tsuji T (1993) A model for the generation of target signals in trajectory formation. Sixth International Conference on Handwriting and Drawing, pp 74–76
Mussa-Ivaldi FA, Hogan N, Bizzi E (1985) Neural, mechanical and geometrical factors subserving arm posture in humans. J Neurosci 5:2732–2743
Paul R (1981) Robot manipulators; mathematics, programming, and control. MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.
Salisbury JK (1980) Active stiffness control of a manipulator in Cartesian Coordinates, Proceedings of IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, pp 95–100
Winter DA (1979) Biomechanics of human movement. Wiley-Interscience, New York
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Tsuji, T., Morasso, P.G., Goto, K. et al. Human hand impedance characteristics during maintained posture. Biol. Cybern. 72, 475–485 (1995). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00199890
Received:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00199890