The Barrow Neurological Institute BNI Div of Neurobiology. Arizona State University Dept of Biology Dept of Exercise Science Dept of Chemical, Bio and Mechanical Science Admission to the Program and Supervision of Trainees Training Faculty .
Humans are good at interacting mechanically with objects in their environment.
One reason for this is the intrinsic viscoelastic behavior of the arm, which ensures that interaction forces are low even given uncertainty about the geometry of objects. It is very difficult to describe complex, spatial tasks using current behavioral models, even though the models are simple analytically. The result of this research is an intuitive, Euclidean-geometric model of viscoelastic behavior. This model is well suited to describing complex spatial tasks. It has been used to assemble a spatial puzzle for toddlers using an anthropomorphic robot and a binocular vision system.