Chapter 5 Adaptive optimal control of human tracking

The motor behaivour of subjects performing visual tracking tasks is quantified by identifying the mathematical relationship between the visual information presented to the eye and the resulting motor response generated at the hand. It has long been known that this relationship is equivocal and that no unique mathematical model exists to describe the behaviour of the human operator. In what follows we develop the hypothesis that tracking behaviour is variable because the central nervous system (CNS) functions as an adaptive optimal controller of muscles, biomechanics and external systems. It automatically tunes its input-output relationship to compensate for the dynamics of the system being controlled and to compensate for inherent time delays by predicting future values of the input signals. We explore the proposal that the CNS plans motor responses to achieve goals using a minimum of input muscular energy and that it can trade tracking accuracy against demand for input energy by altering the speed of the response. Hypotheses about information processing performed by the CNS during visual tracking are presented in the form of a computer simulation. Distributed parallel processing circuitry is employed in the simulator to construct adaptive digital filters which operate independently and in parallel. These digital filters mimic the behaviour of hypothesized neural adaptive filters within the CNS. Indeed in general, descriptions of the simulator can be taken as hypotheses about the structure and function of neural circuitry and about the information processing performed by the CNS during control of movement. As with any scientific theory, the hypotheses are tested experimentally by comparing the behaviour of the simulator with that of human subjects performing the same task. A summary of key findings from a number of studies of human tracking behaviour carried out at our laboratory is presented and many of the findings are compared with the behaviour of the simulator.

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