Quantification of the effects of haptic feedback during a motor skills task in a simulated environment

Abstract

This paper seeks to establish the quantitative effects of providing force feedback on user performance in human computer interaction. A reciprocal tapping test is employed in conjunction with Fitts' law in order to establish a measure of human performance in a simple target selection task. The test was performed using a PHANToM haptic interface, under conditions with and without the provision of force feedback. It was found that providing force feedback significantly improved subjects' movement times, but had no effect on the rate of information processing (IP) as defined by Fitts' law. However, it was shown that for conditions of ballistic movement (corresponding to a low task difficulty (ID)), there was a highly significant improvement in IP for the condition with force feedback, but no improvement when force feedback was not employed. This was deemed due to the fact that for the non-haptic condition no force cues were available, therefore the user had to rely on visual cues, hence, ballistic movement was not possible.