Analyzing transfer of motor skills in the inverted pendulum task

Abstract

Humans can solve new problems by applying the knowledge of existing problems. This phenomenon is called transfer of knowledge. To investigate transfer of learned motor skills, the present study analyzed the inverted pendulum, a classic continuous motor control task in optimal control design, with a type of optimal controller. I demonstrated that, without additional motor learning, the optimal controller can be reused/applied to optimally solve other problems in the same task class, by adapting the controller function.