ON THE CONTROL OF BIOLOGICALLY AND KINEMATICALLY REDUNDANT MANIPULATORS

One of the key problems in motor control concerns the apparent redunda ncy of muscles and joints. This biological and kinematic redundancy ha s been an object of study since long. In this paper we will give a rev iew of the various approaches which have been proposed to solve this p roblem. We will give a comparison of the results of these approaches w ith special emphasis on recent models, which try to deal with this pro blem by eliminating the number of degrees of freedom. This reduction w ill be achieved by imposing constraints, which follow from the biomech anics of the system under study or from some plausible requirements on the behaviour of these systems in various motor tasks. Since this pro blem is a key issue both in the control of biological and artificial r obot manipulators, we will also discuss models from the robotics commu nity, as well as the possible relevance of biological models for robot ics.