Abstract

Abstract. We present a new method for representing human movement compactly, in terms of a linear superimposition of simpler movements termed primitives. This method is a part of a larger research project aimed at modeling motor control and imitation using the notion of perceptuo-motor primitives, a basis set of coupled perceptual and motor routines. In our model, the perceptual system is biased by the set of motor behaviors the agent can execute, so it automatically classifies observed movements into its executable repertoire. In this paper, we describe a method for automatically deriving a set of primitives directly from human movement data. We used data from a psychophysical experiment on human imitation to derive a set of primitives, and then used those primitives as a basis for superposition and sequencing to reconstruct the original movements. We performed principal component analysis on segments from these data, resulting in a set of basis vectors. Next we clustered in the space of projections of segments onto the eigenvectors, to obtain a set of frequently used movements. To validate the approach experimentally, we used the movement obtained by expanding the cluster points in terms of the eigenvectors as a sequence of via points to control a humanoid dynamic simulation. We also developed an error metric to measure the effectiveness of the process. 1

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