My work is aiming at establishing the bases of a semiotics of motion, in order to facilitate the programing of complex robotics systems. The objective is to build a symbolic model of the action, based on the analysis of the numerical functions that drive the motion (control and planning). The methodology comes from the well-known robotics concepts: motion-planning algorithms, control of redundant systems and task-function approach. The originality of the work is to consider the "task" as the unifying concept both to describe the motion and to control its execution. The document is organized in two parts. In the first part, the task-function control framework is extended to cover all the possible modalities of the robot. The objective is to absorb from the lowest-possible functional level the maximum of uncertainty factors. It is then not any more necessary to model these factors at the higher functional levels. This sensorimotor layer is then used as a basic action "vocabulary" that enables the system to be controlled with a higher-level interface. In the second part, this action vocabulary is used to provide a dedicated robotics programing language, to build motion-planning methods and to describe an observed movement. The proposed methods are generic and can be applied to a various systems, from robotics (redundant robots) to computer animation (virtual avatars). Nonetheless, the work is more specifically dedicated to humanoid robotics. Without forgetting other possible outlets, humanoid robotics provides a tangible applicative and experimental framework. It also leads toward the natural human motion, as presented in the end of the document.