Since 1979, the Friends of TUM e. V. of the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have been awarding doctoral and habilitation prizes in recognition of the achievements of the young TUM generation. This year's winners include Dr. Justinas Česonis, a PhD student from the Department Health and Sport Sciences. The prize is endowed with 1,500 euros.
As part of his cumulative doctorate, which was supervised by Prof. Dr. David Franklin at the Associate Professorship of Neuromuscular Diagnostics and passed with distinction, the engineer and scientist devoted himself to the topic of "Seeing the future is a fundamental skill: the influence of time-to-target in visuomotor control". Dr. Česonis combined experiments on humans using robotic systems and computational modelling approaches to develop new ideas for calculating the underlying processes involved in controlling movements based on visual impressions. A particular focus was on the novel understanding that time-to-target is an important control input in visuomotor control and optimal feedback control. In addition, a new computational model was presented that enables the accurate modeling of grasping movements.
"The TUM Doctoral Award is a wonderful recognition of my work and achievements," says Dr. Česonis happily. "It's great to win this Award after investing a lot of time and effort in my research. I was already proud when I submitted my doctorate, but now it's even nicer to receive external recognition. I would especially like to thank my supervisor David Franklin for his support."
The dissertation is based on five research studies. The first three studies relate to human control behavior during goal-directed reaching. The first study investigated the optimality of human reaching movements in the presence of visual interference. In the second study, a computational implementation was proposed to obtain an accurate estimate of time-to-target in future actions. In the third study, subjects were then tested in two separate tasks requiring switching between different feedback controllers. It was shown that human behavior corresponds well with the predictions of his novel "mixed horizon model".
In the fourth and fifth studies, Dr. Česonis investigated the mechanisms of visuomotor feedback control during balancing. For this purpose, a novel experimental setup with a simulated inverted pendulum on a trolley was introduced, which made it possible to flexibly induce different perturbations in the experimental setup. In the fourth study, the human control behavior of such a pendulum of different lengths was specifically evaluated and shown to be consistent with the equilibrium of a fully mechanical pendulum. Finally, in the fifth study, the visual feedback present in a similar balancing task was distorted to show that participants produced the most stable control when the visual feedback best matched the dynamic behavior of the pendulum.
"Justinas Česonis' research is at the interface between technology and life sciences. His PhD thesis is a beautiful blend of robotics control theory and human physiology," says Prof. Franklin. "I am very proud that he has now won the TUM Doctoral Award for this, which he really deserves. It is great to show that we are conducting cutting-edge research both in our Professorship and in the Department as a whole, which is also recognized by TUM."
The Friends of TUM e. V. support the Technical University of Munich in science, research and teaching and have set themselves the goal of promoting young academics in particular. In doing so, it promotes TUM's long tradition of excellent research in science and technology, innovation and experimentation, integrity and open-mindedness, social competence and family friendliness, and a trustworthy and future-oriented education for young people. The Friends of TUM e. V. was founded back in 1922. Today, the association has over 2,000 individual members and 60 companies and associations.
To the homepage of the Friends of TUM e. V.
Contact:
Prof. Dr. David Franklin
Associate Professorship of Neuromuscular Diagnostics
Georg-Brauchle-Ring 60/62
80992 München
phone: 089 289 24583
e-mail: david.franklin(at)tum.de
Text: Romy Schwaiger
Photos: private/Friends of TUM e. V.