Can the efficiency of a haptic display be increased by short-time practice in exploration?

Abstract

The main aim was to investigate if short-term practice in exploration with a PHANToM can improve performance. A second aim was to find out if some exploration modes are more successful than other modes. Ten participants practiced exploration of nine blocks of 24 virtual objects distributed over three days. The result was that the performance for a majority improved during this practice, but that there were large individual differences. It was suggested that one of the modes has some advantage. A main conclusion is that there is a high risk that studies of displays with users without practice underestimate the usefulness of the displays.