The Use of a Nonlinear Muscle Model in Explaining the Relationship Between Duration, Amplitude, and Peak Velocity of Human Rapid Movements

Abstract

Rapid human movements exhibit a quasilinear relationship between their amplitude and maximum velocity and a log-like relationship between their amplitude and duration. The authors demonstrate that those well-observed relations can be obtained with a simple nonlinear muscle model and a pulse-step control scheme. That result encourages the use of nonlinear musculoskeletal models with simple control schemes for modeling human ballistic movements.

Key Words:

• ballistic movements
• nonlinear muscle model
• nonlinear viscosity
• reaching movements
• saccadic eye movements