Adding Haptic Feedback to Virtual Environments With a Cable-Driven Robot Improves Upper Limb Spatio-Temporal Parameters During a Manual Handling Task

Abstract

Physical interactions within virtual environments are often limited to visual information within a restricted workspace. A new system exploiting a cable-driven parallel robot to combine visual and haptic information related to environmental physical constraints (e.g. shelving, object weight) was developed. The aim of this study was to evaluate the impact on user movement patterns of adding haptic feedback in a virtual environment with this robot. Twelve healthy participants executed a manual handling task under three conditions: 1) in a virtual environment with haptic feedback; 2) in a virtual environment without haptic feedback; 3) in a real physical environment. Temporal parameters (movement time, peak velocity, movement smoothness, time to maximum flexion, time to peak wrist velocity) and spatial parameters of movement (maximum trunk flexion, range of motion of the trunk, length of the trajectory, index of curvature and maximum clearance from the shelf) were analysed during the reaching, lowering and lifting phases. Our results suggest that adding haptic feedback improves spatial parameters of movement to better respect the environmental constraints. However, the visual information presented in the virtual environment through the head mounted display appears to have an impact on temporal parameters of movement leading to greater movement time. Taken together, our results suggest that a cable-driven robot can be a promising device to provide a more ecological context during complex tasks in virtual reality.

Grand Field Challenges for Cognitive Neuroergonomics in the Coming Decade

“…VR can be useful to the design of technological interfaces leading to a reduction of research costs when compared to real scenarios (Chryssolouris et al, 2000 ). VR systems currently come with critical limitations including lower levels of fidelity when compared to real world scenarios (Hu et al, 2011 ), the lack of proper haptic feedback (Faure et al, 2020 ), and simulation sickness for a non-negligible percentage of the population (Duzmańska et al, 2018 ). But, VR technologies are rapidly improving and provide possible solutions to minimize many problems associated with low control, expensive access, and insufficient sample sizes in translational and applied neuroergonomics research in the next decades.…”

Feedback Type May Change the EMG Pattern and Kinematics During Robot Supported Upper Limb Reaching Task

“…In the small-ball mode, mean and peak velocities were higher with the terminal haptic feedback modalities. Functional refinement in daily activities when employing terminal haptic feedback may be attributed to alterations in the magnitude of changes in movement time [29] . Although multimodal feedback is expected to be more effective for motor learning due to its enriched information, this study did not confirm the significant superiority of terminal multimodal feedback over haptic feedback.…”

An all-position type control strategy of the haptic interactive virtual training system based on cable-driven

“…The disadvantage of this structure is that the cable transmission accuracy is low and it is easy to entangle. 22 In terms of control, initially HIVMTS used a cable tension control strategy, such as the four cable space virtual motion robot designed by Laval University in Canada, which can simulate collisions between objects of different shapes and has three DOF 23 ; Zou et al analyzed the stiffness of the astronaut training system and improved the tension control strategy based on the system stiffness to enhance smoothness 24 ; And the parallel cable driven virtual robot which has improved in terms of workspace and control accuracy was designed by the team in which the author participated. 25 The systems that use this control strategy in other fields include the variable stiffness parallel cable drive mechanism designed by Zhang et al 26 The parallel series hybrid joint proposed by them has the characteristics of light structure and large workspace.…”