When a robot teaches humans: Automated feedback selection accelerates motor learning

Abstract

A multitude of robotic systems have been developed to foster motor learning. Some of these robotic systems featured augmented visual or haptic feedback, which was automatically adjusted to the trainee’s performance. However, selecting the type of feedback to achieve the training goal usually remained up to a human trainer. We automated this feedback selection within a robotic rowing simulator: Four spatial errors and one velocity error were considered, all related to trunk-arm sweep rowing set as the training goal to be learned. In an alternating sequence of assessments without augmented feedback and training sessions with augmented, concurrent feedback, the experimental group received feedback, thus addressing the main shortcoming of the previous assessment. With this approach, each participant of the experimental group received an individual sequence of 10 training sessions with feedback. The training sequences from participants in the experimental group were consecutively applied for participants in the control group. Both groups were able to reduce spatial and velocity errors due to training. The learning rate of the requested velocity profile was significantly higher for the experimental group compared with the control group. Thus, our robotic rowing simulator accelerated motor learning by automated feedback selection. This demonstration of a working, closed-loop selection of types of feedback, i.e., training conditions, could serve as the basis for other robotic trainers incorporating further human expertise and artificial intelligence.

Rowing Simulator Modulates Water Density to Foster Motor Learning

“…In recent years, developments on computer processing capabilities, and robotic systems have given rise to robot-assisted training in many fields, e.g., in rehabilitation (Marchal-Crespo and Reinkensmeyer, 2009), in sports simulation (Rauter et al, 2019) and in surgical training (Enayati et al, 2018). Such robotic systems used in various domains share the common purpose of supporting humans improving/acquiring new skills.…”

“…Novice participants were observed to benefit from haptic error reduction in golf (Duarte and Reinkensmeyer, 2015), haptic guidance in tennis (Marchal-Crespo et al, 2013), and various unimodal as well as multimodal feedback designs in a complex rowing task (Rauter et al, 2015;Sigrist et al, 2015). Naïve participants' motor learning was also investigated by adapting the provided feedback to the participants' performance in the rowing task (Rauter et al, 2019). The study successfully showed the benefits of automated and individualized feedback selection for beginners; however, further investigation is needed to extend the findings to more advanced participants.…”

Configurable 3D Rowing Model Renders Realistic Forces on a Simulator for Indoor Training

“…In the previous studies on the rowing simulator, the vibration problem could be suppressed by setting the minimum rope tension force (τ min rope ) to a fixed value of 50 N , since the rendered forces at the end-effector were low due to the fact that body-arm rowing was used as the rowing task [24][25][26][27]. However, this minimum rope tension of 50 N yielded neither realistic recovery forces nor eliminated the transversal vibration issue for the rapid, full-body rowing movement.…”

“…Although commercial products, which can provide propulsion forces and oar kinematics while rowing on a boat, are available, these devices are not yet capable of providing feedback about the resulting errors, i.e., difference between desired and actual performance [49,50]. Therefore, as previously studied with beginner rowers, three modalities rendered on the rowing simulator could also be used to present feedback to the expert rowers for performance enhancement [26,51,52].…”

“…In our laboratory, we also developed a rowing simulator to support realistic training for sculling and sweep rowing indoors [23]. Thanks to the real-time control and dedicated hardware setup, our rowing simulator has been used for training of rowers [22] and motor learning related research such as augmented feedback designs [24,25] and robotic training strategies [26,27].…”