Optimal Movement Primitives

Part of Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 7 (NIPS 1994)

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Authors

Terence Sanger

Abstract

The theory of Optimal Unsupervised Motor Learning shows how a network can discover a reduced-order controller for an unknown nonlinear system by representing only the most significant modes. Here, I extend the theory to apply to command sequences, so that the most significant components discovered by the network corre(cid:173) spond to motion "primitives". Combinations of these primitives can be used to produce a wide variety of different movements. I demonstrate applications to human handwriting decomposition and synthesis, as well as to the analysis of electrophysiological experiments on movements resulting from stimulation of the frog spinal cord.