Decomposition of Limb Movement Based on Muscular Coordination During Human Running

Abstract

The study of decomposing movement into units of motor function is evolving in neuroscience. Meanwhile, in robotics, there is a problem with redundant Degrees Of Freedom (DOF) in the motor control of humanlike robots. We attempt to achieve fewer-DOF control of a human-like musculoskeletal robot by using our knowledge of the units of motor function. In this paper, we introduce “the agonist-antagonistmuscle pairs (A-A) ratio” and “A-A activity,” which are defined by using ElectroMyoGraphic (EMG) data and which describe the coordination between the agonist and antagonist muscles. Human running is decomposed into two units of motor function from the point of view of muscle coordination using Principal Component Analysis (PCA) of these biological signals. The kinematic meanings of the extracted patterns of muscle coordination are visualized by human-like musculoskeletal leg robot.