Definition
The intermittent control hypothesis proposes that centrally integrated sensorimotor control systems cannot be described by continuous feedback but rather by a sequence of open loop trajectories determined by intermittent feedback (Fig. 1). The times at which feedback occurs, and at which the trajectories are adjusted, can in principle be at regular intervals or determined by events. The latter is termed event-driven control, and events can occur when measured states or predicted state errors exceed a threshold. The purpose of intermittent control is to provide time within the feedback loop for computation using current measured states to inform the next iteration of open loop predictive control. By comparison with continuous control, intermittent control gains adaptability at the expense of bandwidth.
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Gawthrop, P., Gollee, H., Lakie, M., Loram, I.D. (2020). Intermittent Control of Movement and Balance. In: Jaeger, D., Jung, R. (eds) Encyclopedia of Computational Neuroscience. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7320-6_100701-1
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