Browsing by Author "Li, Bin"
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Item A Formal Investigation of Human Spatial Control Skills: Mathematical Formalization, Skill Development, and Skill Assessment(2016-07) Li, BinSpatial control behaviors account for a large proportion of human everyday activities from normal daily tasks, such as reaching for objects, to specialized tasks, such as driving, surgery, or operating equipment. These behaviors involve intensive interactions within internal processes (i.e. cognitive, perceptual, and motor control) and with the physical world. This dissertation builds on a concept of interaction pattern and a hierarchical functional model. Interaction pattern represents a type of behavior synergy that humans coordinates cognitive, perceptual, and motor control processes. It contributes to the construction of the hierarchical functional model that delineates humans spatial control behaviors as the coordination of three functional subsystems: planning, guidance, and tracking/pursuit. This dissertation formalizes and validates these two theories and extends them for the investigation of human spatial control skills encompassing development and assessment. Specifically, this dissertation first presents an overview of studies in human spatial control skills encompassing definition, characteristic, development, and assessment, to provide theoretical evidence for the concept of interaction pattern and the hierarchical functional model. The following, the human experiments for collecting motion and gaze data and techniques to register and classify gaze data, are described. This dissertation then elaborates and mathematically formalizes the hierarchical functional model and the concept of interaction pattern. These theories then enables the construction of a succinct simulation model that can reproduce a variety of human performance with a minimal set of hypotheses. This validates the hierarchical functional model as a normative framework for interpreting human spatial control behaviors. The dissertation then investigates human skill development and captures the emergence of interaction pattern. The final part of the dissertation applies the hierarchical functional model for skill assessment and introduces techniques to capture interaction patterns both from the top down using their geometric features and from the bottom up using their dynamical characteristics. The validity and generality of the skill assessment is illustrated using two the remote-control flight and laparoscopic surgical training experiments.Item Investigation on Human Guidance and Control Behavior(2017-10-24) Li, Bin; Andersh, Jonathan; Kong, Zhaodan; Mettler, Berenice; mettler@umn.edu; Mettler, Berenice; Interactive Guidance and Control Lab, University of MinnesotaThe flight experiments are conducted in the Interactive Guidance and Control Lab (IGCL) at the University of Minnesota. The data in the flight experiment are collected from human subjects maneuvering miniature rotorcrafts to accomplish a set of tasks. The datasets includes the rotorcraft motion data and operator head movements which are captured using captured using a Vicon motion tracking system (with six MX-40 cameras) sampled at 100Hz. They also include operator eye movements which are recorded using eye tracking glasses (ETG) from Senso-Motoric Instruments (SMI), sampled at 30Hz.Item Stoichiometry of Laminin, alpha-Dystroglycan and Dystrophin in Skeletal Muscle(2009-04-08) Li, BinMuscular dystrophy is a category of hereditary diseases that are characterized by progressive muscle weakness, muscle degeneration, muscle fibrosis and other associated symptoms such as cardiopulmonary complications and nervous system malfunction. Studies on the genetic and molecular causes of muscular dystrophies reveal that deficiency in dystrophin-glycoprotein complex (DGC) is the key of most types of muscular dystrophy. The DGC consists of two core proteins--a cytoplasmic protein dystrophin (DYS) and a transmembrane protein dystroglycan (DG). On the cytoplasmic side of sarcolemma (muscle cell membrane), DYS binds to F-actin (a component of cytoskeleton underlying the cell membrane) and DG. On the extracellular, DG binds to laminin (LAM), an extracellular matrix protein. Together, these proteins form an axis of F-actin-DYS-DG-LAM from cytoplasm across sarcolemma to extracellular space, linking cytoskeleton to extracellular matrix, which has been proven to play an important structural role in stabilizing sarcolemma and transmitting force across sarcolemma during muscle fiber contraction. Further studies on the function of DG reveal that it also plays an important role in basal membrane assembly, cell signaling and neuromuscular junction formation. Interestingly, these functions are less or not affected by disruption of other components of the DYS-DG-LAM axis, which indicates that there might be "free DG" that works without being incorporated into DGC complex. To test this hypothesis, I used quantitative western blot to quantify the absolute concentration of DYS, DG and LAM in skeletal muscles and found out that the molar stoichiometry of DYS:DG:LAM in skeletal muscle was 1:40:1, indicating a large fraction of DG might not be incorporated in DGC. To further confirm the existence of "free DG," I'm currently using different protein baits to coimmunoprecipitate DGC to find out whether all DG are associated with DGC on sarcolemma.