There has long ago that I’ve been thinking how to have good motor skills and adaptation like human beings. Today I have some thoughts on this problem because an example given by a colleague.
The colleague observed in the Klettersteig last year another colleague can quickly adapt to a new gait with his sloppy hiking boots. The bottom of his hiking boots fell apart so that he can not walk like normally, so basically he needs to slide a bit to stop its falling. This adaptation process happens so fast that there’s no algorithm and no robots can do it.
This is a really interesting problem, first of all, when the adaptation happens, the colleague basically do some trial and error for different gaits to figure it out. But which level of these trial and error happens? I tend to believe that under-the-hood the fine-grained low level motor skills are already prepared, if so then the problem becomes:
- What happens during the adaptation? What does it even mean here adaptation here if we have some fine-grained motor skills already? Is it an identification problem, the goal is to identify a new model for the shoes?
- What’s the criteria that he determines to stop? When he’s able to walk? Is he has an intention to do all those trials, if so what are they?