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Human stick balancing: an intermittent control explanation

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Abstract

There are two issues in balancing a stick pivoting on a finger tip (or mechanically on a moving cart): maintaining the stick angle near to vertical and maintaining the horizontal position within the bounds of reach or cart track. The (linearised) dynamics of the angle are second order (although driven by pivot acceleration), and so, as in human standing, control of the angle is not, by itself very difficult. However, once the angle is under control, the position dynamics are, in general, fourth order. This makes control quite difficult for humans (and even an engineering control system requires careful design). Recently, three of the authors have experimentally demonstrated that humans control the stick angle in a special way: the closed-loop inverted pendulum behaves as a non-inverted pendulum with a virtual pivot somewhere between the stick centre and tip and with increased gravity. Moreover, they suggest that the virtual pivot lies at the radius of gyration (about the mass centre) above the mass centre. This paper gives a continuous-time control-theoretical interpretation of the virtual-pendulum approach. In particular, by using a novel cascade control structure, it is shown that the horizontal control of the virtual pivot becomes a second-order problem which is much easier to solve than the generic fourth-order problem. Hence, the use of the virtual pivot approach allows the control problem to be perceived by the subject as two separate second-order problems rather than a single fourth-order problem, and the control problem is therefore simplified. The theoretical predictions are verified using the data previously presented by three of the authors and analysed using a standard parameter estimation method. The experimental data indicate that although all subjects adopt the virtual pivot approach, the less expert subjects exhibit larger amplitude angular motion and poorly controlled translational motion. It is known that human control systems are delayed and intermittent, and therefore, the continuous-time strategy cannot be correct. However, the model of intermittent control used in this paper is based on the virtual pivot continuous-time control scheme, handles time delays and moreover masquerades as the underlying continuous-time controller. In addition, the event-driven properties of intermittent control can explain experimentally observed variability.

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Notes

  1. The equivalent length \(L_p\) is also the distance from the pivot to the centre of percussion.

  2. This corresponds to Lee et al. (2012), Equation (13), where \(k = k_\theta +1\) and \(d=\theta _0=0\).

  3. As discussed by, for example, Kasdin (1995), there are a number of approaches to the simulation of random processes. As discussed by, for example, Dobrowiecki and Schoukens (2001) and Pintelon and Schoukens (2001), the random multisine is a well-established method for simulating band-limited random processes with clearly defined properties. The random multisine has been used previously in the intermittent control context (Gollee et al. 2012).

  4. In this context, mediolateral corresponds to left–right motion and anteroposterior to forward–backward motion.

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Acknowledgments

The work reported here is related to the linked EPSRC Grants EP/F068514/1, EP/F069022/1 and EP/F06974X/1 “Intermittent control of man and machine”. Peter Gawthrop was supported by the NICTA Victoria Research Laboratory at the University of Melbourne and is now a Professorial Fellow within the Melbourne School of Engineering; he would also like to acknowledge the many discussions about intermittent control with Ian Loram, Martin Lakie, Henrik Gollee and Liuping Wang. The authors would like to thank the reviewers for their helpful comments on the draft manuscript.

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Gawthrop, P., Lee, KY., Halaki, M. et al. Human stick balancing: an intermittent control explanation. Biol Cybern 107, 637–652 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00422-013-0564-4

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