Representation Of Motor Skill Research Articles

Humanoid Robot Interactions by Motion Description Language and Dialogue

This paper describes the development of a system for facilitating humanoid robots to acquire sequence of movements by motion description and dialogue. The unique feature of our system is that we define a descriptive language and framework that allows the specification of humanoid motions and the representation of motor skills. We subsequently developed and tested a virtual reality simulation system that can execute the motion descriptive language. We then extended the system to allow humanoid robots to acquire motion descriptions through conversing with human. We implemented and tested the proposed system on the NAO humanoid robot. Our implementation includes a dialogue module that continues to update the encoded motion descriptions as the conversation advances and an action module that retrieves the acquired motion descriptions and direct the robot to perform the specified tasks.

Representation of motor skills in human long-term memory

This study uses the example of the tennis serve to investigate the nature and role of long-term memory in skilled athletic performance. Information processing linked with complex movements has always been notoriously difficult to investigate. However, a new experimental method revealed that athletic expertise was characterized by well-integrated networks of so-called basic action concepts (BACs) that each corresponded to functionally meaningful submovements. In high-level experts, these representational frameworks were organized in a distinctive hierarchical tree-like structure, were remarkably similar between individuals and were well matched with the functional and biomechanical demands of the task. In comparison, action representations in low-level players and nonplayers were organized less hierarchically, were more variable between persons and were less well matched with functional and biomechanical demands. It is concluded that, in concert with situational goals and constraints, movement representations of this kind in long-term memory might provide the basis for action control in skilled voluntary movements in the form of suitably organized perceptual-cognitive reference structures.

A neuropsychological theory of motor skill learning.

This article describes a neuropsychological theory of motor skill learning that is based on the idea that learning grows directly out of motor control processes. Three motor control processes may be tuned to specific tasks, thereby improving performance: selecting spatial targets for movement, sequencing these targets, and transforming them into muscle commands. These processes operate outside of awareness. A 4th, conscious process can improve performance in either of 2 ways: by selecting more effective goals of what should be changed in the environment or by selecting and sequencing spatial targets. The theory accounts for patterns of impairment of motor skill learning in patient populations and for learning-related changes in activity in functional imaging studies. It also makes a number of predictions about the purely cognitive, including accounts of mental practice, the representation of motor skill, and the interaction of conscious and unconscious processes in motor skill learning.