Effect of haptic and visual information on asymmetric hand motion in a robot-assisted task

Abstract

In a robot-assisted tele-operation, the operator uses a hand controller to maneuver a tool attached to the robot's endeffector. The performance in such tele-operation may depend on perceptual information about the operating site as well as the design of the hand-controller. A hand-controller that provides haptic information as force feedback during the interaction in tele-operation may be beneficial in robot-assisted tasks such as robot-assisted surgery. To evaluate the effect of such perceptual information such as visual and haptic information, it is important to analyze their effect on human hand motion and performance in a robot-assisted task. This study examines the effect of visual and haptic information on hand motion and the performance in a robot-assisted tracing task in each of three degrees of freedom (DOF). Our findings reveal that there is a significant asymmetry in performance in each DOF. The effect of force conditions as haptic information is more evident under inadequate visual information during the tracing task. A force condition opposite to the motion direction of the tracing yields best performance in compared to no force or other force conditions. These findings can be useful in designing a hand controller interface that yields optimal performance in robot-assisted tasks.

Investigating multiple human performance measures in teleoperation task: A translation task in a tele‐sandblasting maintenance system

“…For all teleoperation system applications, visual perception has a significant impact on user performance. Recently, researchers have reported the effects of visual perception in several teleoperation applications, including visual display (Samad, 2013;Toyoda, Yabuta, & Matsunaga, 2012;Widmer & Hu, 2010), viewing angle (Lii et al, 2010;Passmore, Nielsen, Cosh, & Darza, 2001;Widmer & Hu, 2010), graphic dimension (Huber, Taffinder, Russell, & Darzi, 2003;Passmore et al, 2001), obstructed vision (Lii et al, 2010), and VD (workspaceto-camera distance; Chotiprayanakul et al, 2011). However, none of these researchers considered the effect of VD (eye-to-screen distance).…”