Experimental and theoretical analysis of human arm trajectories in 3D movements

In this study, experiments of three-dimensional (3D) arm movements have been conducted, and the positions of marks provided on a shoulder, an elbow, and a hand are observed. In addition to the investigation of such trajectories in a 3D space, these trajectories are projected to a sagittal, a frontal, and a transverse planes. Then, specific features in these planes are investigated, and detailed properties of human arm trajectories have been uncovered. Next, kinematical features of a human arm during a movement have been analyzed on the basis of behavior of joint angles. Here, a kinematical arm model with joint redundancy is defined, and the kinematics of the model is reconstructed from the measured trajectories. Subsequently, the trajectories of all joint angles during a movement are obtained using the inverse kinematics, and their properties are analyzed in detail. The result shows that the angular trajectories are remarkably similar to those which are produced under the minimum angular jerk criterion.

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