Effect of visuo-haptic co-location on 3D Fitts' task performance

• Published in: 2011 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems Vol. 2011; pp. 3460 - 3467
• Main Authors: Fu, M. J., Hershberger, A. D., Sano, K., Cavusoglu, M. C.
• Format: Conference Proceeding Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States IEEE 31-12-2011
• Subjects: Haptic interfaces; Humans; Mirrors; Performance evaluation; Three dimensional displays; Throughput; Visualization
• ISBN: 1612844545; 9781612844541
• ISSN: 2153-0858; 2153-0866
• DOI: 10.1109/IROS.2011.6094707

Given the ease that humans have with using a keyboard and mouse in typical, non-colocated computer interaction, many studies have investigated the value of co-locating the visual field and haptic workspaces using immersive virtual reality (VR) modalities. Significant understanding has been gained by previous work comparing physical tasks against VR tasks, visuo-haptic co-location versus non-colocation, and even visuo-haptic rotational misalignments in VR. However, few studies have explored all of these paradigms in context with each other and it is difficult to do inter-study comparisons because of the variation in tested motor tasks. Therefore, the goal for the current study was to characterize human performance of Fitts' point-to-point reaching task - an established test of manual performance - in the physical, co-located/non-colocated VR, and rotated VR visualization conditions. A key finding was the significant decrease observed in end-point error for tasks performed in a co-located virtual reality environment. The results also showed cyclic performance degradations due to rotational visuo-haptic misalignments that were consistent with trends reported by the literature.