Newman Lab
MIT MECHANICAL ENGINEERING
EXTRACTING FORCE DOMAIN SYNERGIES FROM PIANO PLAYING
It is believed the brain sends commands to kinematic movements in the body; synergies couple independent said commands to form coordinated movements. Kinematic synergies have been found in simple movements, however, healthy hands complete a wide range of complex kinematic tasks and exert force. This project aimed to extract force domain (both rotational and linear force) synergies from piano playing data, a complex task, and possibly use kinematic synergies to predict them.
- Project Abstract
Research Program
MIT Summer
During the Summer of 2023, I worked in The Eric P. and Evelyn E. Newman Laboratory for Biomechanics and Human Rehabilitation under Dr. Neville Hogan, using MATLAB to better understand the extent of healthy hand behavior. Experiments were conducted prior to the summer in which six subjects of various experiences played multiple pieces of various difficulty. The relative angle of the subjects’ fingers as well as the velocity at which they pressed each piece were recorded in MediaPipe and MIDI files, respectively.
I analyzed a single piece for a single subject in MATLAB using Singular Value Decomposition and Non-Negative Matrix Factorization. After successfully relating rotational force synergies and kinematic synergies, it seemed as though the subject effectively decoupled their behavior, exhibiting independent control over their fingers.
The downward direction is assumed to be positive, yet force produced negative values with SVD (pictured on left)
