Unstructured human environments present a substantial challenge to effective robotic operation. Mobile manipulation in typical human environments requires dealing with novel unknown objects, cluttered workspaces, and noisy sensor data. We present an approach to mobile manipulation in such environments using a combination of 2D and 3D visual processing, tactile and proprioceptive sensor data, fa...

Behavioral and physiological characteristics of individuals within the same species have been found to be stable across time and contexts. In this study, we investigated individual differences in learning abilities and object and social manipulation to test for consistency within individuals across different tasks. Individual ravens (Corvus corax) were tested in simple color and position discri...

Humans excel in manipulation tasks, a basic skill for our survival and a key feature in our manmade world of artefacts and devices. In this work, we study how humans manipulate simple daily objects, and construct a probabilistic representation model for the tasks and objects useful for autonomous grasping and manipulation by robotic hands. Human demonstrations of predefined object manipulation ...

The autonomous execution of manipulation tasks in unstructured, dynamic environments requires the consideration of various motion constraints. Any motion performed during the manipulation task has to satisfy constraints imposed by the task itself, but also has to consider kinematic and dynamic limitations of the manipulator, avoid unpredictably moving obstacles, and observe constraints imposed ...

The lateral occipito-temporal cortex (LOTC), including the extrastriate body area, is known to be involved in the perception of body parts. Although still controversial, recent studies have demonstrated the role of the LOTC in higher-level body-related cognition in humans. This study consisted of two experiments (E1 and E2). The first (E1) was an exploratory experiment to find the neural correl...

The posterior inner perisylvian region including the secondary somatosensory cortex (area SII) and the adjacent region of posterior insular cortex (pIC) has been implicated in haptic processing by integrating somato-motor information during hand-manipulation, both in humans and in non-human primates. However, motor-related properties during hand-manipulation are still largely unknown. To invest...

STUDY DESIGN Case report. BACKGROUND The use of spinal manipulation as a treatment to facilitate neuromuscular control of the paraspinal musculature is not well described in the literature. The use of rehabilitative ultrasound imaging (RUSI) may offer a convenient way to investigate and document possible changes occurring in the lumbar multifidus associated with manipulation intervention. C...

OBJECTIVE Working memory, a critical cognitive capacity that is affected in schizophrenia, can be divided into maintenance and manipulation processes. Previous behavioral research suggested that manipulation is more affected than maintenance in patients with chronic schizophrenia. In this study of first-episode schizophrenia patients, the authors evaluated the extent to which the two working me...

Selecting and remembering visual information is an active and competitive process. In natural environments, representations are tightly coupled to task. Objects that are task-relevant are remembered better due to a combination of increased selection for fixation and strategic control of encoding and/or retaining viewed information. However, it is not understood how physically manipulating objec...

The present study was designed to determine whether manipulation learned with a set of digits can be transferred to grips involving a different number of digits, and possible mechanisms underlying such transfer. The goal of the task was to exert a torque and vertical forces on a visually symmetrical object at object lift onset to balance the external torque caused by asymmetrical mass distribut...