The effect of the non-target object position on wrist motion

In the present work we show the important role of wrist movements for the avoidance of non-target objects (obstacles) in a psychological pick-and-place experiment. The results show that humans can adjust the position of their wrist as well as the angle between their underarm and their hand during a prehension movement relative to the position of a non-target object. This indicates that humans tend to grasp the target object from the side which is further away from the non-target object. Based on these results, a preliminary model is proposed to simulate the wrist movement with respect to the position of a non-target object. We introduce this model with regard to a possible application in human-robot interaction and to better understand human´s collision avoidance mechanism.