Decomposition and Reconstruction of Human Palm Movements

Objective:
The human hand is known to have excellent manipulation ability compared to other primate hands. Without the palm movements, the human hand would lose more than 40% of its functions. However, uncovering the constitution of palm movements is still a challenging problem involving kinesiology, physiology, and engineering science.
Methods:
By recording the palm joint angles during common grasping, gesturing, and manipulation tasks, we built a palm kinematic dataset. Then, a method for extracting the eigen-movements to characterize the common motion correlation relationships of palm joints was proposed to explore the palm movement constitution.
Results:
This study revealed a palm kinematic characteristic that we named the joint motion grouping coupling characteristic. During natural palm movements, there are several joint groups with a high degree of motor independence, while the movements of joints within each joint group are interdependent. Based on these characteristics, the palm movements can be decomposed into seven eigen-movements. The linear combinations of these eigen-movements can reconstruct more than 90% of palm movement ability. Moreover, combined with the palm musculoskeletal structures, we found that the revealed eigen-movements are associated with joint groups that are defined by muscular functions, which provided a meaningful context for palm movement decomposition.
Conclusion:
This paper suggests that some invariable characteristics underlie the variable palm motor behaviors and can be used to simplify palm movement generation.
Significance:
This paper provides important insights into palm kinematics, and helps facilitate motor function assessment and the development of better artificial hands.