Patient-Tailored Assistance: A New Concept of Assistive Robotic Device That Adapts to Individual Users

Improving Challenge/Skill Ratio in a Multimodal Interface by Simultaneously Adapting Game Difficulty and Haptic Assistance through Psychophysiological and Performance Feedback

“…From the results shown in Table 2 , we can infer that arousal, dominance, MAF, SCR frequency, HR, and SCL changed significantly across the four difficulty levels (i.e., p < 0.05). These results are coherent with previous studies on psychophysiological changes during mixed physical/psychological HRI tasks (Rodriguez Guerrero et al, 2010 ; Novak et al, 2010a , b , 2011a , b ; Koenig et al, 2011a , c ; Badesa et al, 2012 , 2014 ; Morales et al, 2014 ) and show that, in this experiment, HR, SCL, and SCR were the most sensitive physiological parameters to discriminate between the difficulty levels of the VR task. For HR, the observations made went further and showed that this variable exhibited a considerable inertia when preceded by a higher level of physical activity, as can be seen in Figure 5 (i.e., delayed effect of task presentation order, see Table 1 ; more specifically, a continued effect of level 4 on level 2 can be seen).…”

“…The SCL and SCR behaved similarly to HR and increased significantly with increasing level of game difficulty. This is comparable to what has been found in other studies (Novak et al, 2010a ; Badesa et al, 2012 , 2014 ; Morales et al, 2014 ; Knaepen et al, 2015 ). The SKT was the only physiological variable that did not differ significantly between the four difficulty levels.…”

“…The SKT was the only physiological variable that did not differ significantly between the four difficulty levels. Although decreases in SKT have been put forward as a marker to detect changes in mental workload (Ohsuga et al, 2001 ; Koenig et al, 2011e ), other studies have found no significant differences for SKT with changes in mental workload (Novak et al, 2010a ; Badesa et al, 2012 ; Knaepen et al, 2015 ) or found that variations depended on the test subject (Morales et al, 2014 ). Novak et al ( 2010a ) proposed that a certain threshold of mental workload should probably be exceeded before the SKT starts to decrease significantly (Novak et al, 2010a ).…”

“…Also in 2010, Rodriguez Guerrero et al ( 2010 ) presented a step forward toward a working prototype of a biocooperative closed loop that included HR feedback to modulate a set of assistive forces in a robotic-aided neurorehabilitation scenario. Soon after, Novak et al ( 2011a , b ), Koenig et al ( 2011a ), Badesa et al ( 2012 , 2014 ), and Morales et al ( 2014 ) implemented a more complex closed-loop system that included feedback parameters related to HR, RR, GSR, and SKT (Novak et al, 2011a , b ; Koenig et al, 2011b ; Badesa et al, 2012 , 2014 ; Morales et al, 2014 ). These studies aimed to change the difficulty level of the VR task depending on the emotional and cognitive load experienced by the subjects (Koenig et al, 2011b ; Novak et al, 2011a , b ; Badesa et al, 2012 , 2014 ; Morales et al, 2014 ).…”

Feedback Assistance with Concern for Others in Cooperative Work

“…Most of the researches on skill assistance have been aimed at improving individual skills [1]. Kusaka and Tanaka studied skill assistance by using a semiactive assistance mechanism [2].…”