Abstract: Approaches presented herein provide for simulation of human motion for human-robot interactions, such as may involve a handover of an object. Motion capture can be performed for a hand grasping and moving an object to a location and orientation appropriate for a handover, without a need for a robot to be present or an actual handover to occur. This motion data can be used to separately model the hand and the object for use in a handover simulation, where a component such as a physics engine may be used to ensure realistic modeling of the motion or behavior. During a simulation, a robot control model or algorithm can predict an optimal location and orientation to grasp an object, and an optimal path to move to that location and orientation, using a control model or algorithm trained, based at least in part, using the motion models for the hand and object.