An Experimental Study of Haptic Feedback in a Teleoperated Assembly Task

2008 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Göran A. V. Christiansson
Keyword(s):  
Task Performance ◽  
Force Feedback ◽  
Haptic Feedback ◽  
Human Subjects ◽  
Low Frequency ◽  
Contact Forces ◽  
Task Completion ◽  
Mental Load ◽  
Assembly Task ◽  
Haptic Cues

Haptic feedback is known to improve teleoperation task performance for a number of tasks, and one important question is which haptic cues are the most important for each specific task. This research quantifies human performance in an assembly task for two types of haptic cues: low-frequency (LF) force feedback and high-frequency (HF) force feedback. A human subjects study was performed with those two main factors: LF force feedback on/off and HF force (acceleration) feedback on/off. All experiments were performed using a three degree-of-freedom teleoperator where the slave device has a low intrinsic stiffness, while the master device on the other hand is stiff. The results show that the LF haptic feedback reduces impact forces, but does not influence low-frequency contact forces or task completion time. The HF information did not improve task performance, but did reduce the mental load of the teleoperator, but only in combination with the LF feedback.

Evaluation of a Haptic Mixed Reality System for Interactions with a Virtual Control Panel

2005 ◽  
Vol 14 (6) ◽  
pp. 677-696 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christoph W. Borst ◽  
Richard A. Volz
Keyword(s):  
Task Performance ◽  
Visual Feedback ◽  
Direct Contact ◽  
Force Feedback ◽  
Haptic Feedback ◽  
Mixed Reality ◽  
Control Panel ◽  
Combined Approach ◽  
Subjective Ratings ◽  
Virtual Control

We present a haptic feedback technique that combines feedback from a portable force-feedback glove with feedback from direct contact with rigid passive objects. This approach is a haptic analogue of visual mixed reality, since it can be used to haptically combine real and virtual elements in a single display. We discuss device limitations that motivated this combined approach and summarize technological challenges encountered. We present three experiments to evaluate the approach for interactions with buttons and sliders on a virtual control panel. In our first experiment, this approach resulted in better task performance and better subjective ratings than the use of only a force-feedback glove. In our second experiment, visual feedback was degraded and the combined approach resulted in better performance than the glove-only approach and in better ratings of slider interactions than both glove-only and passive-only approaches. A third experiment allowed subjective comparison of approaches and provided additional evidence that the combined approach provides the best experience.

Telepresence in Industrial Applications: Implementation Issues for Assembly Tasks

2010 ◽  
Vol 19 (5) ◽  
pp. 415-429 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marwan Radi ◽  
Verena Nitsch
Keyword(s):  
Force Feedback ◽  
Haptic Feedback ◽  
Industrial Applications ◽  
Task Completion ◽  
Human Intelligence ◽  
Guidance Strategies ◽  
Industrial Setting ◽  
Successful Execution ◽  
Place Task ◽  
Assembly Tasks

In contrast to automated production, human intelligence is deemed necessary for successful execution of assembly tasks that are difficult or expensive to automate in small and medium lots. However, human ability is hindered in some cases by physical barriers such as miniaturization or in contrast, very heavy components. Telepresence technology can be considered a solution for performing a wide variety of assembly tasks where human intelligence and haptic sense are needed. This work highlights several issues involved in deploying industrial telepresence systems to manipulate and assemble microparts as well as heavy objects. Two sets of experiments are conducted to investigate telepresence related aspects in an industrial setting. The first experiment evaluates the usefulness of haptic feedback for a human operator in a standard pick-and-place task. Three operation modes were considered: visual feedback, force feedback, and force assistance (realized as vibration). In the second experiment, two different guidance strategies for the teleoperator were tested. The comparison between a position and a velocity scheme in terms of task completion time and subjective preferences is presented.

scholarly journals Influence of Force and Torque Feedback on Operator Performance in a VR-Based Suturing Task

2010 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 217-230 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. Santos-Carreras ◽  
R. Beira ◽  
A. Sengül ◽  
R. Gassert ◽  
H. Bleuler
Keyword(s):  
Task Performance ◽  
Open Surgery ◽  
Force Feedback ◽  
Haptic Feedback ◽  
Surgical Care ◽  
Medical Background ◽  
Technological Advances ◽  
Robotic Surgical System ◽  
Surgical System

The introduction of Minimally Invasive Surgery (MIS) has revolutionised surgical care, considerably improving the quality of many surgical procedures. Technological advances, particularly in robotic surgery systems, have reduced the complexity of such an approach, paving the way for even less invasive surgical trends. However, the fact that haptic feedback has been progressively lost through this transition is an issue that to date has not been solved. Whereas traditional open surgery provides full haptic feedback, the introduction of MIS has eliminated the possibility of direct palpation and tactile exploration. Nevertheless, these procedures still provide a certain amount of force feedback through the rigid laparoscopic tool. Many of the current telemanipulated robotic surgical systems in return do not provide full haptic feedback, which to a certain extent can be explained by the requirement of force sensors integrated into the tools of the slave robot and actuators in the surgeon’s master console. In view of the increased complexity and cost, the benefit of haptic feedback is open to dispute. Nevertheless, studies have shown the importance of haptic feedback, especially when visual feedback is unreliable or absent. In order to explore the importance of haptic feedback for the surgeon’s master console of a novel teleoperated robotic surgical system, we have identified a typical surgical task where performance could potentially be improved by haptic feedback, and investigate performance with and without this feedback. Two rounds of experiments are performed with 10 subjects, six of them with a medical background. Results show that feedback conditions, including force feedback, significantly improve task performance independently of the operator’s suturing experience. There is, however, no further significant improvement when torque feedback is added. Consequently, it is deduced that force feedback in translations improves subject’s dexterity, while torque feedback might not further benefit such a task.

Tactile Feedback Improves Performance in a Palpation Task: Results in a VR-Based Testbed

2012 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 435-451 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Santos-Carreras ◽  
Kaspar Leuenberger ◽  
Evren Samur ◽  
Roger Gassert ◽  
Hannes Bleuler
Keyword(s):  
Visual Cues ◽  
Force Feedback ◽  
Haptic Feedback ◽  
Cost Effective ◽  
Interaction Force ◽  
Tactile Feedback ◽  
Tactile Display ◽  
Task Completion ◽  
Multimodal Feedback ◽  
Feedback Information

Robotic surgery provides many benefits such as reduced invasiveness and increased dexterity. This comes at the cost of no direct contact between surgeon and patient. This physical separation prevents surgeons from performing direct haptic exploration of tissues and organs, imposing exclusive reliance on visual cues. Current technology is not yet able to both measure and reproduce a realistic and complete sense of touch (interaction force, temperature, roughness, etc.). In this paper, we put forward a concept based on multimodal feedback consisting of the integration of different kinds of visual and tactile cues with force feedback that can potentially improve both the surgeon's performance and the patient's safety. We present a cost-effective tactile display simulating a pulsating artery that has been integrated into a haptic workstation to combine both tactile and force-feedback information. Furthermore, we investigate the effect of different feedback types, including tactile and/or visual cues, on the performance of subjects carrying out two typical palpation tasks: (1) exploring a tissue to find a hidden artery and (2) identifying the orientation of a hidden artery. The results show that adding tactile feedback significantly reduces task completion time. Moreover, for high difficulty levels, subjects perform better with the feedback condition combining tactile and visual cues. As a matter of fact, the majority of the subjects in the study preferred this combined feedback because redundant feedback reassures subjects in their actions. Based on this work, we can infer that multimodal haptic feedback improves subjects' performance and confidence during exploratory procedures.

scholarly journals Remote Minimally Invasive Surgery – Haptic Feedback and Selective Automation in Medical Robotics

2011 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 221-236 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christoph Staub ◽  
Keita Ono ◽  
Hermann Mayer ◽  
Alois Knoll ◽  
Heinz Ulbrich ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Minimally Invasive ◽  
Heart Surgery ◽  
Force Feedback ◽  
Haptic Feedback ◽  
Medical Robotics ◽  
Contact Forces ◽  
Working Environment ◽  
Surgical Instruments ◽  
Prediction Algorithm ◽  
Robot System

The automation of recurrent tasks and force feedback are complex problems in medical robotics. We present a novel approach that extends human-machine skill-transfer by a scaffolding framework. It assumes a consolidated working environment for both, the trainee and the trainer. The trainer provides hints and cues in a basic structure which is already understood by the learner. In this work, the scaffolding is constituted by abstract patterns, which facilitate the structuring and segmentation of information during “Learning by Demonstration” (LbD). With this concept, the concrete example of knot-tying for suturing is exemplified and evaluated. During the evaluation, most problems and failures arose due to intrinsic system imprecisions of the medical robot system. These inaccuracies were then improved by the visual guidance of the surgical instruments. While the benefits of force feedback in telesurgery has already been demonstrated and measured forces are also used during task learning, the transmission of signals between the operator console and the robot system over long-distances or across-network remote connections is still a challenge due to time-delay. Especially during incision processes with a scalpel into tissue, a delayed force feedback yields to an unpredictable force perception at the operator-side and can harm the tissue which the robot is interacting with. We propose a XFEM-based incision force prediction algorithm that simulates the incision contact-forces in real-time and compensates the delayed force sensor readings. A realistic 4-arm system for minimally invasive robotic heart surgery is used as a platform for the research.

Effect of Frame Rate and Force Feedback on Virtual Object Manipulation

1996 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-108 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Richard ◽  
Georges Birebent ◽  
Philippe Coiffet ◽  
Grigore Burdea ◽  
Daniel Gomez ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Force Feedback ◽  
Haptic Feedback ◽  
Statistical Significance ◽  
Open Loop ◽  
Error Rates ◽  
Frame Rate ◽  
Computer Hardware ◽  
Virtual Object ◽  
Task Completion ◽  
Multimodal Feedback

Research on virtual environments (VE) produced significant advances in computer hardware (graphics boards and i/o tools) and software (real-time distributed simulations). However, fundamental questions remain about how user performance is affected by such factors as graphics refresh rate, resolution, control latencies, and multimodal feedback. This article reports on two experiments performed to examine dextrous manipulation of virtual objects. The first experiment studies the effect of graphics frame rate and viewing mode (monoscopic vs. stereoscopic) on the time required to grasp a moving target. The second experiment studies the effect of direct force feedback, pseudoforce feedback, and redundant force feedback on grasping force regulation. The trials were performed using a partially-immersive environment (graphics workstation and LCD glasses), a DataGlove, and the Rutgers Master with force feedback. Results of the first experiment indicate that stereoscopic viewing is beneficial for low refresh rates (it reduced task completion time by about 50% vs. monoscopic graphics). Results of the second experiment indicate that haptic feedback increases performance and reduces error rates, as compared to the open loop case (with no force feedback). The best performance was obtained when both direct haptic and redundant auditory feedback were provided to the user. The large number of subjects participating in these experiments (over 160 male and female) indicates good statistical significance for the above results.

scholarly journals The Role of Visuohaptic Experience in Visually Perceived Depth

2009 ◽  
Vol 101 (6) ◽  
pp. 2789-2801 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yun-Xian Ho ◽  
Sascha Serwe ◽  
Julia Trommershäuser ◽  
Laurence T. Maloney ◽  
Michael S. Landy
Keyword(s):  
Visual Cues ◽  
Haptic Feedback ◽  
Human Subjects ◽  
Large Individual ◽  
Light Sources ◽  
Haptic Information ◽  
Almost All ◽  
Haptic Cues ◽  
Haptic Input

Berkeley suggested that “touch educates vision,” that is, haptic input may be used to calibrate visual cues to improve visual estimation of properties of the world. Here, we test whether haptic input may be used to “miseducate” vision, causing observers to rely more heavily on misleading visual cues. Human subjects compared the depth of two cylindrical bumps illuminated by light sources located at different positions relative to the surface. As in previous work using judgments of surface roughness, we find that observers judge bumps to have greater depth when the light source is located eccentric to the surface normal (i.e., when shadows are more salient). Following several sessions of visual judgments of depth, subjects then underwent visuohaptic training in which haptic feedback was artificially correlated with the “pseudocue” of shadow size and artificially decorrelated with disparity and texture. Although there were large individual differences, almost all observers demonstrated integration of haptic cues during visuohaptic training. For some observers, subsequent visual judgments of bump depth were unaffected by the training. However, for 5 of 12 observers, training significantly increased the weight given to pseudocues, causing subsequent visual estimates of shape to be less veridical. We conclude that haptic information can be used to reweight visual cues, putting more weight on misleading pseudocues, even when more trustworthy visual cues are available in the scene.

scholarly journals The Effects of Warning Message Highlighting on Novel Assembly Task Performance

1982 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-97 ◽  
Author(s):  
Morris A. Zlotnik
Keyword(s):  
Task Performance ◽  
Error Rates ◽  
Task Completion ◽  
Control Groups ◽  
Assembly Task ◽  
Warning Messages ◽  
Warning Message ◽  
And Control ◽  
Completion Times

A review of examples and specifications relating to critical operating procedures revealed considerable variation in recommended standards for highlighting warning messages. An experiment was therefore conducted to examine the effectiveness of various methods of highlighting warning messages contained in the instructions for a novel assembly task. Findings indicated that the presence of warning messages shortened task completion times and reduced error rates between the experimental and control groups.

Evaluation of Auditory and Visual Feedback on Task Performance in a Virtual Assembly Environment

2006 ◽  
Vol 15 (6) ◽  
pp. 613-626 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ying Zhang ◽  
Terrence Fernando ◽  
Hannan Xiao ◽  
Adrian R. L Travis
Keyword(s):  
Task Performance ◽  
Visual Feedback ◽  
Motion Tracking ◽  
Human Performance ◽  
Experimental System ◽  
Virtual Assembly ◽  
Task Completion ◽  
Assembly Task ◽  
Assembly Simulation ◽  
Optical Motion

This paper presents the creation of an assembly simulation environment with multisensory feedback (auditory and visual), and the evaluation of the effects of auditory and visual feedback on the task performance in the context of assembly simulation in a virtual environment (VE). This VE experimental system platform brings together complex technologies such as constraint-based assembly simulation, optical motion tracking technology, and real time 3D sound generation technology around a virtual reality workbench and a common software platform. A peg-in-a-hole and a Sener electronic box assembly task have been used as the task cases to conduct the human factor experiment, using sixteen participants. Both objective performance data (i.e., task completion time, TCT; and human performance error rate, HPER) and subjective opinions (i.e., questionnaires) on the utilization of auditory and visual feedback in a virtual assembly environment (VAE) have been gathered from the experiment. Results showed that the introduction of auditory and/or visual feedback into VAE did improve the assembly task performance. They also indicated that integrated feedback (auditory plus visual) offered better assembly task performance than either feedback used in isolation. Most participants preferred integrated feedback to either individual feedback (auditory or visual) or no feedback. The participants' comments demonstrated that nonrealistic or inappropriate feedback had a negative effect on the task performance, and easily made them frustrated.

scholarly journals Overloaded and at Work: Investigating the Effect of Cognitive Workload on Assembly Task Performance

2020 ◽  
pp. 001872082092992 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesco N. Biondi ◽  
Angela Cacanindin ◽  
Caitlyn Douglas ◽  
Joel Cort
Keyword(s):  
Task Performance ◽  
Muscle Activity ◽  
Biceps Brachii ◽  
Cognitive Task ◽  
Task Completion ◽  
Cognitive Workload ◽  
Assembly Task ◽  
Cognitive Overload ◽  
Completion Times ◽  
Back Task

Objective This study investigates the effect of cognitive overload on assembly task performance and muscle activity. Background Understanding an operator’s cognitive workload is an important component in assessing human–machine interaction. However, little evidence is available on the effect that cognitive overload has on task performance and muscle activity when completing manufacturing tasks. Method Twenty-two volunteers completed an assembly task while performing a secondary cognitive task with increasing levels of demand ( n-back). Performance in the assembly task (completion times, accuracy), muscle activity recorded as integrated electromyography (EMG), and self-reported workload were measured. Results Results show that the increasing cognitive demand imposed by the n-back task resulted in impaired assembly task performance, overall greater muscle activity, and higher self-reported workload. Relative to the control condition, performing the 2-back task resulted in longer assembly task completion times (+10 s on average) and greater integrated EMG for flexor carpi ulnaris, triceps brachii, biceps brachii, anterior deltoid, and pectoralis major. Conclusion This study demonstrates that working under high cognitive load not only results in greater muscle activity, but also affects assembly task completion times, which may have a direct effect on manufacturing cycle times. Application Results are applicable to the assessment of the effects of high cognitive workload in manufacturing.

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