Online Decision-Making and Control During Human-Human Interactions

University Of Delaware, Newark DE

Investigators

Abstract

Research on human motor behavior has largely focused on how individuals control their movement. Yet human survival has depended on our ability to interact with others, both cooperatively and competitively. Understanding how humans collaborate or compete in motor tasks is highly relevant across many facets of society, such as medical rehabilitation, teamwork in the military or sport, robotics, and human-robot interaction. Despite its ubiquity and importance to daily life, how humans physically interact with one another remains poorly understood. This project can make important contributions towards the development of biologically inspired control systems, aligning with the PIs' long-term goal of developing more effective biologically inspired robot-guided neurorehabilitation systems that can seamlessly interact with humans. The investigators use the theoretical frameworks of decision sciences and optimal feedback control to explore how multiple interacting humans use vision and touch to make rapid decisions and coordinate their actions. Human pairs will be immersed in a state-of-the-art virtual reality and robotics suite that allows individuals to sense their partner’s actions visually and haptically while they perform either a collaborative or competitive motor task. In addition to healthy participants, the investigators also consider a stroke population in order to gain causal insight into how the nervous system weighs visual and haptic feedback when sensory information becomes sparse due to brain injury. The blend of experimental work and computational modeling involving both healthy and clinical populations will allow a better understanding of the mechanisms that underpin emergent interactive behavior. The investigators also have a strong commitment to diversity and inclusion and plan include undergraduates and high school students in the research. This project is jointly funded by the Perception, Action, and Cognition (PAC) Program, the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR), the Disabilities and Rehabilitation Engineering (DARE) Program, and the Mind, Machine and Motor Nexus (M3X) Program. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.