Modeling the neurobiology of human movement

Much of our current understanding of human movement is descriptive. To understand more deeply, it's important to assess the physical constraints on any organism - human or robot - that is obliged to interact properly with the physical world. As Horace Barlow observed: "The wing would be a very mysterious structure if we did not know that birds could fly". Indeed, the classical qualitative knowledge of feathers and wing beats (available in the days of Icarus) didn't make much sense of it; instead, it was modern quantitative knowledge of aerodynamic range, turbulence phenomena, stability and control. The third lesson will describe how the construction of robots can, in the same way, give us a better grasp of what is required for the correct execution of movement, and provide us with a rigorous test for our understanding of human movement. Using robotic hands and walking robots as examples, I'll describe how the successes and failures of robotics teach us what's really important for human movement.