Motor Primitives in Humans and Robots

Posted 25 Jul 2006 at 20:21 UTC by steve

When reading papers on human motor development or motor control, you're likely to run across the terms "primitive reflexes" and "motor primitives". Not suprisingly, these terms have different meanings depending on which field of research they're used in. Recently released online, is a 2005 paper by Jürgen Konczak titled, "On the notion of motor primitives in humans and robots" (PDF format), which sorts out the meanings of these phrases in each field. Konczak provides an overview of the human motor system which he believes will benefit those designing motor control systems for robots. For more information Konczak's work, visit the University of Minnesota's Human Senorimotor Control Lab.