DFG

Together with the advances in building anthropomorphic robot hands, we are facing the question of how to dexterously control such complex robots with up to 20 degrees of freedom in up to five fingers and a wrist. Implementing fixed grasp and manipulation programs does not lead to satisfying results. In our work, we propagate a manifold representation of such movements recorded from human demonstration. The main idea is to construct manifolds embedded in the finger joint angle space which represent the subspace of hand postures associated with a specific manipulation movement.

Do you prefer audio books over printed ones, and if so, what is the advantage? Why is video conferencing so awkward? Why do you rely on SMS messages as a means of communication in some situations but on e-mailing in others? Did you ever notice that you raise your eyebrows when asking people a question – even on the telephone? And did you ever wonder how to make your point in a discussion most convincingly?

Alignment is not restricted to support language, dialog functions and the execution of speech production. Similar mechanisms support the cooperative execution of more general actions. Besides the extension of alignment into the action domain, we hypothese that the formation of alignment is adaptive: Repetitions of actions facilitate the alignment and its adaptation is important for acquiring team expertise. In our opinion, adaptation and adaptive alignment paves the way for smooth and effective common acting.