The influence of muscle groups on performance of multiple degree-of-freedom input

Abstract

The literature has long suggested that the design of computer input devices should make use of the fine, smaller muscle groups and joints in the fingers, since they are richly represented in the human motor and sensory cortex and they have higher information processing bandwidth than other body parts. This hypothesis, however, has not been conclusively verified with empirical research. The present work studied such a hypothesis in the context of designing 6 degree-of-freedom (DOF) input devices. The work attempts to address both a practical need -designing efficient 6 DOF input devices -and the theoretical issue of muscle group differences in input control. Two alternative 6 DOF input devices, one including and the other excluding the fingers from the 6 DOF manipulation, were designed and tested in a 3D object docking experiment. Users' task completion times were significantly shorter with the device that utilised the fingers. The results of this study strongly suggest that the shape and size of future input device designs should constitute affordances that invite finger participation in input control.

PressureMove: Pressure Input with Mouse Movement

“…In an empirical study, Zhai et al [21] investigated the effectiveness of finger muscle groups in controlling multiple degrees-of-input. Zhai et al [21] gave users two alternative 6DOF input devices, one that controlled a cursor with the movement of the entire arm (glove) and the other with the fingers of a hand (FingerBall [21]). The objective of the study was to compare finger control to arm control in finely rotating and positioning an object in 3D.…”

“…Pressure manipulations controlled object orientation and mouse movement controlled movement. In a 2D rotate and translate task, similar to the tetrahedral docking task in 3D [8,21], we examined the proposed designs for integrating mouse movement and pressure rotation. Our results show that one of our PressureMove designs, the rate-based integration offered best control and performance and was significantly faster than all other techniques including the traditional mouse.…”

On the Limits of the Human Motor Control Precision: The Search for a Device’s Human Resolution

“…The effect on performance of the use of different muscle groups has been observed in several studies [3,17]. For example, for a six degrees of freedom docking task, a device held in the hand and rotated by the fingers is more efficient than the whole hand [17].…”

“…For example, for a six degrees of freedom docking task, a device held in the hand and rotated by the fingers is more efficient than the whole hand [17]. However, here again, the performance was only studied in terms of throughput, not in terms of achievable resolution (i.e., the DHR).…”

“…Studies have shown that human performance in device control depends on the muscle groups being activated [3,17]. As such, we expect that the achievable precision varies with the choice of device and mode of operation, as these collectively determine which muscle group is used.…”