KINARM End-Point Robot Laboratory

Accurate movement is essential for human survival and success. In many cases, generating accurate and appropriate movements requires substantial learning. Motor learning encompasses a diverse range of phenomena, from the acquisition of complex motor skills to the maintenance of consistent motor performance in response to changes in the environment or the body. These changes entail that the same motor commands will not always lead to the same movement outcomes. This type of motor learning, in which new motor commands must be formed that are appropriate or adapted to the changed environment or body, is also known as motor adaptation.

The KINARM Facility hosts a KINARM End-point robot, which is designed to study different forms of motor adaptation including force-field adaptation and visuomotor adaptation. The KINARM has a stiff, graspable robotic arm that can be programmed to apply forces to the hand during point-to-point reaching movements. In order to maintain accurate reaching performance, participants must adapt their motor commands accordingly. The KINARM also has precise motion tracking and a 2D virtual reality display that permits natural, intuitive presentation of visual feedback in the movement plane. This feature allows novel mappings to be imposed between hand motion and the corresponding visual feedback that is provided during reaching movements, which similarly requires participants to adapt in order to maintain accurate performance.

Researchers involved in projects using these facilities:

• David Kaplan
• Matthew Crossley