The the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory-Medical School Collaborative Biomedical Program was begun in the mid-1960s, one of the major facets was to engage the technical expertise of the engineers and physical scientists at the Laboratory to apply state-of-the-art technology to the solution of extant biological problems. A major accomplishment of this program has been the design and fabrication of unique instruments and systems that allow the exploration of specific research protocols designed to delineate the role of individual behavioral and physiological variables in studies of primate motor performance. The specific instruments provided through this collaborative program are summarized, as are the research results produced by their use over the past twenty years. The principal result of this research has been to delineate the role of the primate motor cortex in specifying and/or controlling upper-limb movements controlled by the proximal joints.