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.