Daohang Sha

Papers

Total Citations

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About

Daohang Sha is a researcher whose work lies at the intersection of motor control, robotics, and biomechanics, with a particular focus on how the human arm plans and executes complex movements. His major contributions center on the application of optimal control principles to understand biological motion, most notably through his study of minimum jerk trajectories. In his most cited work, "Minimum Jerk Reaching Movements of Human Arm with Mechanical Constraints at Endpoint" (2006, 22 citations), Sha demonstrated that when the hand is constrained to move along a spherical surface, the brain selects a geodesic path—the shortest and smoothest route—providing a powerful theoretical and experimental validation of the constraint optimal principle. This work bridges neuroscience and engineering, offering insights for robotic arm control and rehabilitation. Sha also explored how the motor system adapts to dynamic environments in "Multijoint Arm Control: Beyond Reaching" (2004), using human-robot interaction to study movement smoothness when interacting with force fields simulating physical objects. Though his citation counts are modest, his research is foundational for those studying the geometry of movement and sensorimotor control, offering a rigorous, mathematically grounded perspective on how humans achieve graceful, efficient motion under physical constraints.