South Asian Studies Brown Bag Series: Stability over Strength: Role of Muscle Mechanics in a Grasping Hand - Neelima Sharma

Event time: 
Thursday, November 9, 2017 - 12:00pm to 1:30pm
Location: 
Henry R. Luce Hall (LUCE ), 203 See map
34 Hillhouse Avenue
New Haven, CT 06511

Interest in how muscles are used for movement by animals is ancient, dating back at least to Aristotle’s treatises on the parts and movement of animals. An exquisite example of such movement is the control of our fingers for the many dexterous tasks that we routinely perform. Central to all these hand skills is our ability to touch surfaces with our fingertips without slipping or otherwise losing stability. The finger is like a marionette; muscles controlled by the brain is the puppeteer, the tendons the strings, and the finger the puppet. Using my current research on human fingers as an example, I will show how biological, mathematical and robotic principles are used to understand the orchestration of the body by the nervous system. We find that the nervous system has to contend with challenging problems of stability even for the apparently mundane task of pressing a table with the fingertip. In order to deal with these challenges, the nervous system relies on the spring-like properties of muscle. So, the muscles are not merely motors that power the movement but are an integral part of the control strategies used by the brain. Our work has implications not only for the design of robotic manipulators and prosthetics but also in rehabilitation.