Motion control via muscle synergies: application to throwing

In the current paper, we present a control method based on muscle synergy extraction and adaptation to drive a human arm in a direct dynamics simulation of an overhead throwing motion. The experimental protocol for synergy extraction and model are first presented, followed by a control method consisting of a series of optimizations to adapt muscle parameters and synergies to match experimental data. Results show that the motion can be accurately reproduced thanks to the muscle synergy extraction and adaptation to the model.