Tactile Information Processing by Human Operators in Control Systems

This paper considers relevant human factors to interact with a pliable body in a teleoperation surgical environment. Our aim is to identify the human capabilities, in terms of penetration depth and responsiveness, in a task of pliable surface contact, where surgeons are required to adopt a specific behavior immediately after the contact. A psychophysical experiment is conducted using virtual surfaces rendered with two different force-feedback devices. The results show that impact velocity affects performance in surface contact perception. In a second experiment where different postures are used, we examine whether the previous results hold for the particular ergonomic configuration employed. The results show that posture affects performance especially in expert users. Our findings underscore the importance of understanding the interplay of human perceptual parameters in the surgical teleoperation framework.

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“…For aggregate data, our estimate RT 0 ϭ 218 ms is close to the values reported elsewhere (Schmid & Bekey, 1978;Smeets & Brenner;Flanders).…”

Section: Reaction Timesupporting

confidence: 89%

“…As stated in prior literature (see, e.g., Schmid & Bekey, 1978;Flanders, 2009), processing reaction time is critical in haptic perception. We acknowledge that the reaction time we have measured cannot be entirely attributed to the human ability to detect a virtual surface.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 74%

Human Factors in Haptic Contact of Pliable Surfaces

Vicentini¹,

Botturi

2009

Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments

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“…Information about the human operator's performance when controlling a robot or simulated "vehicle" is usually presented visually (McRuer 1980), although tactile (Hill 1970;Schmid and Bekey 1978), auditory (Mirchandani 1972;Takashima et al 1980) and kinaesthetic (Jagacinski et al 1979(Jagacinski et al , 1983) displays have also been used to convey error information to the operator. Visual and tactile error signals result in similar performance if the signal fed back to the operator consists of the error (i.e.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…difference between the input signal and controlled output)plus information about its rate of change (Hill 1970). However, the error variance is considerably lower with visual displays if the error signal alone is fed back, and longer time delays are associated with tactile displays (Hill 1970;Jagacinski et al 1983;Schmid and Bekey 1978). The more successful non-visual tracking systems have used compensatory displays in which only the difference, or error, between the reference input and system output is presented to the operator.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Influence of the mechanical properties of a manipulandum on human operator dynamics. II. Viscosity

Jones

Hunter

1993

Biol. Cybern.

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The influence of the viscosity of a manipulandum used by a human operator in a position-control pursuit-tracking task was examined. An active servo-system was used to set the viscosity of a manipulandum (motor) connected to the forearm to one of seven levels ranging in a geometric series from 12 to 800 N.s/m. During each condition the viscosity of the motor was held constant by a computer while subjects tracked, by moving their forearm in the sagittal plane, a visually presented target whose position changed randomly every 1.5 s for 255 s. Nonparametric and parametric impulse response functions were calculated between the input (target) and output (position) in each tracking condition. Nonparametric analyses revealed that subjects became sluggish at higher viscosities (above 200 N.s/m) and took longer to reach the target. A second-order low-pass transfer function was found to provide a very good description of tracking performance at each viscous level. The gain and damping parameter of this transfer function were not affected by the manipulandum's viscosity, whereas both the pure delay and natural frequency of the human operator system decreased systematically with increasing manipulandum viscosity. These findings suggest that over the range of viscosities studied, there is no speed-accuracy trade-off in terms of determining an optimal level of manipulandum viscosity for a human operator, and that a less viscous interface will result in faster performance.

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“…This work showed that the tactile sense could provide at least as much orientation information as sight although the reaction to that information was slightly slower, being in the order of 200 ms as opposed to 75 ms (Van Erp and Van Den Dobbelsteen, 1998). This translated in a previous beltarea tactile display used in a tracking task (Schmid and Bekey, 1978) to a response time of 0.25 sec versus 0.10 seconds for a visual response. This slight delay is thought to be due to the conduction velocity of the nerves concerned and is of no practical significance in the application proposed in this study.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Efficacy of Tactile Cues from a Limited Belt-Area System in Orienting Well-Rested and Fatigued Pilots in a Complex Flight Environment

Curry¹,

Estrada²,

Webb³

et al. 2008

PsycEXTRA Dataset

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The public reporting burden for this collection of information is estimated to average 1 hour per response, including the time for reviewing instructions, searching existing data sources, gathering and maintaining the data needed, and completing and reviewing the collection of information. Send comments regarding this burden estimate or any other aspect of this collection of information, including suggestions for reducing the burden, In the years 2003-2005 the U. S. military lost in excess of $500M and 30 lives per year due to SD mishaps, over half of which involved brownout. Current standard Army aircraft cockpit displays do not provide drift information leaving the pilot guessing as to the direction and magnitude of the aircraft's drift vector when close to the ground. This information is critical to the safe landing of helicopters in brownout or whiteout conditions. This effort tested a system that provides drift information through the tactile sense (8 tactors placed every 45 degrees) via a belt around the waist. The belt was worn by pilots flying the USAARL UH-60 helicopter with vision restricted to the instrument panel only, the same pilots flew a repeated series of maneuvers close to the ground with and without the system before and after 37 hours of fatigue. The pilot's performance was significantly better using the belt than without in both rested and fatigued conditions. (Continued on next page.)Tactile displays, Spatial Disorientation, Brownout UNCLAS UNCLAS UNCLAS SAR 30

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Tactile Information Processing by Human Operators in Control Systems

Cited by 25 publications

References 8 publications

Human Factors in Haptic Contact of Pliable Surfaces

Human Factors in Haptic Contact of Pliable Surfaces

Influence of the mechanical properties of a manipulandum on human operator dynamics. II. Viscosity

Efficacy of Tactile Cues from a Limited Belt-Area System in Orienting Well-Rested and Fatigued Pilots in a Complex Flight Environment

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