HOME HELP FEEDBACK SUBSCRIPTIONS ARCHIVE SEARCH TABLE OF CONTENTS		QUICK SEARCH:   [advanced] Author: Keyword(s): Year:  Vol:  Page:

This Article Full Text Full Text (PDF) All Versions of this Article: 93/5/2752    most recent 00799.2004v1 Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Citation Map Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in Web of Science Similar articles in PubMed Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Citing Articles Citing Articles via Web of Science (6) Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Pan, P. Articles by Lynch, K. M. Search for Related Content PubMed PubMed Citation Articles by Pan, P. Articles by Lynch, K. M.

Static Single-Arm Force Generation With Kinematic Constraints

Laboratory for Intelligent Mechanical Systems, Mechanical Engineering Department, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois

Submitted 2 December 2004;

Smooth, frictionless, kinematic constraints on the motion of a grasped object reduce the motion freedoms at the hand, but add force freedoms, that is, force directions that do not affect the motion of the object. We are studying how subjects make use of these force freedoms in static and dynamic manipulation tasks. In this study, subjects were asked to use their right hand to hold stationary a manipulandum being pulled with constant force along a low-friction linear rail. To accomplish this task, subjects had to apply an equal and opposite force along the rail, but subjects were free to apply a force against the constraint, orthogonal to the pulling force. Although constraint forces increase the magnitude of the total force vector at the hand and have no effect on the task, we found that subjects applied significant constraint forces in a consistent manner dependent on the arm and constraint configurations. We show that these results can be interpreted in terms of an objective function describing how subjects choose a particular hand force from an infinite set of hand forces that accomplish the task. Without assuming any particular form for the objective function, the data show that its level sets are convex and scale invariant (i.e., the level set shapes are independent of the hand-force magnitude). We derive the level sets, or "isocost" contours, of subjects' objective functions directly from the experimental data.