Postural primitives: Interactive Behavior for a Humanoid Robot Arm

This paper describes the implementation of reflex action for the arm of the humanoid robot Cog [5]. A set of biologically inspired postural primitives are used to create the arm motion. The primitives are combined in different ways to achieve reaching with grasping and withdrawal reflexes, allowing the arm to interact safely with both objects and people. This paper describes the reflexes, the biological inspiration for the control, and includes data collected from the robot.