Force sensing from human demonstration: stiffness, impedance and kinesthetic sensibility

This paper presents an analysis of force and position data that were generated by a human demonstration of a complex and asymmetrical insertion task. The goal of this paper is to understand human sensing ability so as to apply similar techniques to robotics. The assembly process is modelled using hybrid dynamics which separates discrete states of contact and highlights the changes in contact as the essential parts of the process. The human was blindfolded and only had tactile sense available. Position, velocity and force data were recorded as generated by the human. Both stiffness and mechanical impedance are used to attempt to interpret the human generated data. Surprisingly, both of these methods are inadequate to describe any significant portions of the data. It is argued that classical approaches to the understanding of human manipulation skills are insufficient, and more advanced testing and analysis is needed to effectively understand human force sensing abilities