Presenting Our Work on Human Motor Adaptation at IFAC 2026

In August, I attended the IFAC World Congress 2026 in Busan, South Korea, where I was very happy to present our work, “Motor Cost Re-Optimization in Indirect Human Movement Pattern Adaptation.”

This work continues a research thread from our earlier IEEE TNSRE paper, “Inducing Human Motor Adaptation Without Explicit Error Feedback: A Motor Cost Approach”. In that study, we showed that human movement patterns could be reshaped implicitly by altering motor cost, without explicit movement errors or instructions.

Presenting our work on motor cost re-optimization at the IFAC World Congress 2026 in Busan — Presenting our work on motor cost re-optimization in indirect human movement pattern adaptation.

At IFAC, we revisited the same experimental data from a more quantitative perspective to better understand what was driving that adaptation. By estimating and decomposing the motor cost, we found that the observed adaptation was primarily associated with reducing the artificial load introduced by the robotic intervention. The results also highlighted that people may adopt different strategies when responding to the same altered cost landscape.

Beyond the presentation, IFAC was also a memorable week of plenary talks, catching up with friends and researchers across the control community, and, of course, the Control Orchestra at the closing ceremony.

Group photo with colleagues in front of the IFAC 2026 conference backdrop in Busan — With colleagues at IFAC 2026 in Busan.

At the IFAC World Congress 2026 conference backdrop in Busan, South Korea — A memorable week in Busan.

It was a great week in Busan, and a meaningful milestone for a research thread that has been developing over several years.