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Manual obstacle avoidance takes into account visual uncertainty, motor noise, and biomechanical costs

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Abstract

Moving around obstacles requires balancing the need to avoid collisions with the need to minimize biomechanical costs. We investigated this tradeoff by studying the effects of visual uncertainty, motor noise, and practice on clearance over obstacles in a manual positioning task. Participants moved a manipulandum back and forth over a stationary obstacle. We varied visual uncertainty by placing the obstacle at different heights relative to participants’ eyes, and we varied motor noise by having participants hold the object to be moved at different positions relative to the range of motion of the arm joints. Clearance was larger in conditions of higher visual uncertainty than in conditions of lower visual uncertainty, larger in the higher motor noise conditions than in the lower motor noise conditions, and larger early in practice than late in practice. The results indicate that spatial accuracy and biomechanical costs are both taken into account during reaching over obstacles, but to differing degrees across practice.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported in part by a Graduate Fellowship from Penn State University and by an NIH training grant to OHSU. We thank Lindsay Hopkins, Meredith Miller, Meghann Ramsey, Christine Schiller, Layne Vashro, and Matthew Walsh for help in the lab. We also thank Digby Elliott, Mel Goodale, and an anonymous reviewer for helpful comments on an earlier write-up of this work.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Neurology, Oregon Health & Science University, Mail Code NSI, 505 NW 185th Ave, Beaverton, OR, 97006, USA

    Rajal G. Cohen

  2. School of Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Ave, Building 32, Cambridge, MA, 02139, USA

    Jason C. Biddle

  3. Department of Psychology, Pennsylvania State University, Moore Building, University Park, PA, 16802, USA

    David A. Rosenbaum

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  1. Rajal G. Cohen
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  2. Jason C. Biddle
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  3. David A. Rosenbaum
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Correspondence to Rajal G. Cohen.

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Cohen, R.G., Biddle, J.C. & Rosenbaum, D.A. Manual obstacle avoidance takes into account visual uncertainty, motor noise, and biomechanical costs. Exp Brain Res 201, 587–592 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-009-2042-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-009-2042-8

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