Extraction of musculoskeletal synergy related to hand and forearm motion to elucidate human dexterity

2021 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 20K23345
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Research Activity Start-up
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Review Section: 1002:Human informatics, applied informatics and related fields
• Research Institution: Nara Institute of Science and Technology
• Principal Investigator: Cho Sung-Gwi 奈良先端科学技術大学院大学, 先端科学技術研究科, 助教 (50881653)
• Project Period (FY): 2020-09-11 – 2022-03-31
• Keywords: 皮膚表面形状 / 距離センサアレイ / 筋骨格シナジー

Outline of Final Research Achievements

We try to extract cooperative movement units of muscle, tendon, and bones as musculoskeletal synergy from skin deformation to elucidate human dexterity, which realize complex hand motions. We propose a representation method of joint angle by extracting synergies from the skin deformation during single-joint movements by independent component analysis and combining the activeness of the synergies. Then, the expression of the proposed method is verified through estimation accuracy compared to joint angles measured by motion capture. Since certain joint differs significantly in the accuracy between single and combined joint movements, the necessity to deal with the change of relationship between joint angles and skin deformation with forearm pose and select reference movement with considering anatomical characteristics are indicated.

Free Research Field

ヒューマンマシーンインタフェース

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

本研究は，筋肉の活動のみではなくその活動によって生じる腱・骨の活動にも着目し、両者で変化が生じる皮膚表面形状から運動単位として筋骨格シナジーを抽出した．筋骨格の協調を考慮して運動単位を抽出した点に，学術的な意義がある．単関節のみではなく複合関節運動のような複雑な筋骨格の協調が求められる条件においてもシナジーの表現力を検証した．それらの結果から，インタフェースや運動機能評価への応用に，皮膚表面形状・筋骨格シナジーという新たな選択肢が挙げられることを確認した．