Idea: Looking at the control response of people

Say you have a linear motor that can apply a force to a stick with a mark on it. You tell the person holding the stick to attempt to keep the stick positioned so the mark stays at some fixed point. What does the step function look like? Is there a difference between an athlete and some regular guy? How well can a person control a bouncing or nonlinear or some other crazy force pattern? How does the response improve after a few tries?

We can learn to respond to the motion of the stick…maybe there’s some interesting data or models in an experiment like this?