Learning Functional Specialisation for Bimanual Robotic Control

Overview & Synopsis

Bimanual robotic control requires simultaneous management of distinct functional demands under motor noise, energetic costs, and communication delays. We investigate how learning responsibility should be organised across modular controllers and the two arms in a simulated musculoskeletal system with two communicating recurrent controllers. Using a 2 x 2 design, we compare differential versus shared controller objectives and fixed versus balanced hand-task assignments. Task-aligned functional specialisation was strongest when differential objectives were combined with a fixed assignment aligned with contralateral control routing. This condition achieved the highest canonical-task performance and control efficiency, reaching 81.33% bimanual success. Its advantage over shared objectives increased with motor noise but narrowed under stronger energy penalties. Stronger specialisation also reduced hand-role flexibility: reversing the hand roles decreased bimanual success by 80.46 percentage points under Differential-Fixed training, compared with 1.51 percentage points under Shared-Balanced training. These results show that controller objectives and hand-task experience jointly determine functional organisation. Stronger role-specific specialisation favours performance and efficiency when roles remain stable, whereas more distributed training favours interchangeability when roles change.