Motor Synergies for Coordinated Movements in Humanoids

Synthesizing automatons whole body movements is difficult, especially in humanoids with as high degrees of freedoms (DOFs) as humans. Based on a biologically inspired control model we proposed, three different ways of motor synergies over multiple motor routines are discussed to compose complex movements in a 33 DOF humanoid. Motor routine is a movement unit which implements a functional task and only involves those active joints participating in the task. We demonstrate the humanoid doing coordinated walking, sitting and rising, reaching, object manipulation etc