Intermittent control in man and machine

Abstract

It is now over 70 years since Kenneth J. Craik postulated that human control systems behave in an intermittent, rather than a continuous, fashion. This chapter provides a mathematical model of event-driven intermittent control, examines how this model explains some phenomena related to human motion control, and presents some experimental evidence for intermittency. Some new material related to constrained multivariable intermittent control is presented in the context of human standing, and some new material related to adaptive intermittent control is presented in the context of human balance and reaching. We believe that the ideas presented here in a physiological context will also prove to ..