Acquisition of Motor Skills Through EMG-Based Continuous Vibrotactile Haptic and Visual Feedback

• Main Author: More, Yash Prakash
• Format: Dissertation
• Language: English
• Published: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses 01-01-2022
• Subjects: Computer science
• ISBN: 9798368422053

Motor learning is a fundamental behavior that humans learn and rely on in their day-to-day life. These behaviors, which can be applied in the various arenas of life, can be as mundane as sweeping the floor or as complex as performing ballets, game-winning passes, or acting out a sword fight on stage and much more. In all of these behaviors, herein referred to as “activities”, motor learning guides the refinement and production of the underlying muscle activity and co-ordination. Motor learning can be achieved by a novice subject after watching someone (possibly an expert) perform the motor skills (visual feedback), or when they are given vocal guidance (auditory feedback), or through combination of vocal guidance and observation. However, determining ways that learning these activities could be quantified may be important, because even an expert cannot give a novice subject real-time feedback nor quantify the amount of power or strength to use for a particular movement through unaided observation. Even after many sessions of expert guidance, novice subjects still tend to make mistakes, thus we need a way to determine how to cue novice subjects with real-time feedback which may allow them to learn movements faster. In this thesis, we developed a vibrotactile haptic feedback device that can cue novice subjects in real-time without an expert teacher and can autonomously inform subjects on how to perform a particular movement.