Kinesthetic Compensation for Sensorimotor Rearrangements

Abstract

The authors report a new sensorimotor phenomenon in which participants use hand-sensed kinesthetic information to compensate for rotational sensorimotor rearrangements. This compensation benefits from conscious awareness and is related to hand posture. The technique can reduce control inefficiency with some misalignments by as much as 64%. The results support Y. Guiard's (1987) suggestion that in bimanual tasks one hand provides an operational frame of reference for the other hand as in a closed kinematic chain. Results with right-handed participants show that the right and left hands are equally effective at providing such a cue. A constant-angular-targeting-error model, similar to that used for hand movements by H. Cunningham and I. Vardi (1990) and for walking by S. K. Rushton, J. M. Harris, M. R. Lloyd, and J. P. Wann (1998), is used to model the trajectories of targeting hand movements demonstrating the phenomenon. The model provides a natural parameter of the error.

Human Control in Rotated Frames: Anisotropies in the Misalignment Disturbance Function of Pitch, Roll, and Yaw

“…The complex trajectories evident during movement associated with larger rotations demonstrates the challenges for their analysis. We are currently working on a rectification, normalization and filtering technique to develop an averaging process similar to one previously used for similar movements in two-dimensions (Ellis & Adelstein, 2009). For the present descriptive study we have elected to simply exclude from analysis those movements for which it was evident that the participants were unable to accomplish the task because they became very disoriented.…”

“…Why is it there? To answer such questions, we suggest extending our interative targeting model (Ellis & Adelstein, 2009). We have applied it successfully with a parameterfree fit to the first ~65° of rotation ( Fig.…”

“…More recently the spatial motion of a cursor or a physically controlled element with respect to input control device orientation has been examined. (Worringhan & Beringer 1989;Cunningham & Vardi, 1990;Ellis, Tyler, Kim & Stark, 1992;Macedo, Kaber, Endsley, Powanusorn, & Myung, 1998;Ellis & Adelstein, 2009;Abeele & Bock, 2001;Wickens, Keller & Small, 2010;Chintamani, Cao, Ellis, & Pandya, 2010). This situation is frequently encountered in teleoperation when the coordinate systems for motor control and visual feedback are misaligned, e.g., Smith & Smith, 1962;Smith, Henning & Li, 1998.…”

Discontinuity Detection Algorithm for Three-Dimensional Trajectory Data Analysis in Telerobotics

“…Abrupt changes in direction of movement of controlled elements such as a robot arm arise when operators recognize a control error and try to correct it. The frequency and timing of such changes in motion trajectories can accordingly be reflective of the specific underlying control process provided that they correspond to other important control performance measures (Adelstein, Burns, Ellis & Hill, 2005;Ellis & Adelstein, 2009). In particular, they provide evidence of the specific nature of error detection and can assist computational modeling.…”

Misalignment Effect Function Measurement for Oblique Rotation Axes

“…The MEF resulting from pooling results from for rotations about pitch, roll, and yaw for a task like that in this paper. For comparison, results from a related 2D placement task published previously are overlaid (Ellis & Adelstein, 2009). Also overlaid are results from a 3D tracking task done on a perspective display with display-control coordinate misalignments (Ellis, Tyler, Kim & Stark, 1992).…”