In the transferring of expert skills, it takes a great deal of time and effort for beginners to obtain new skills, and it is difficult to teach the skills by using only words. For those reasons, a skill transfer system that uses virtual reality (VR) and a haptic interface technique is very attractive. In this study, we investigated the human perception of fingertip force with respect to the following changes: (1) the spatial change of the presented force, and (2) the change of the time to present the force. Based on the results of the perception experiments, we considered the skill transfer to a person's five fingers by using a five-fingered haptic interface robot.
The teaching of how to exert fingertip forces and how to move the fingers is essential for transferring skill using the fingers to perform fine motor tasks. In this paper we accomplish the transfer of fingertip forces and positions in three-dimensional space by combining a multi-fingered haptic interface robot, which can measure and present the three-dimensional forces and positions at five fingertips, and an image display system that records a trainer's hand image and displays it to a trainee. Several experimental results show a high fingertip force and position transferability and the great potential of our proposed transfer system.
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