The value of collision feedback in robotic surgical skills training

Collision feedback about instrument and environment interaction is often lacking in robotic surgery training devices. The PoLaRS virtual reality simulator is a newly developed desk trainer that overcomes drawbacks of existing robot trainers for advanced laparoscopy. This study aimed to assess the effect of haptic and visual feedback during...

Enhancing Musculoskeletal Injury Rehabilitation and Prevention in Rural Areas: Exploring Vibrotactile Feedback Usage in Rural Areas

Shoulder injuries, prevalent worldwide, often occur from ageing and accidents. In Western countries, these injuries primarily afflict the elderly population, while in rural regions of Bangladesh, Iran, India, and Pakistan, they affect younger individuals who are often the family's primary earners. Due to that, preventing and aiding the recovery...

Age-related impairments and influence of visual feedback when learning to stand with unexpected sensorimotor delays

Background: While standing upright, the brain must accurately accommodate for delays between sensory feedback and self-generated motor commands. Natural aging may limit adaptation to sensorimotor delays due to age-related decline in sensory acuity, neuromuscular capacity and cognitive function. This study examined balance learning in young and...

A Multi-Modal Feedback Communication Interface for Human Working Posture Adjustments

This paper studies non-physical feedback mechanisms to guide human workers toward ergonomic body postures. Specifically, the focus is to solve the tasks that involve no direct physical interaction between the human and the robotic system, therefore tactile guidance by the robot body is not feasible. We propose a multi-modal ergonomic posture...

Orbital HMD: An Intuitive Visual Interface for Robot Teleoperation: With Robotic Welding as Use Case

Robotic teleoperation has gained popularity in various applications, including the nuclear industry, where the experience and intelligence of a human operator is necessary for making complex decisions that are beyond the autonomy of robots. Human-robot interfaces that help strengthen an operator’s situational awareness without inducing excessive...

Guiding the Eye Using the SEEV Model and Gaze-Contingent Feedback

Background: Automated vehicles are promoted as a safety improvement, but they may also bring a new problem of ‘out of the loop’ errors. Automation support in the form of gaze-contingent feedback might be the solution for these errors. Using the SEEV model, operator’s attention allocation can be predicted and using live gaze data, the driver’s...

Visual Feedback for Haptic Assisted Teleoperation of an Industrial Robot: With Dross Removal as a Use Case

Haptic assistance (HA) has been shown to be useful in a wide variety of applications by providing the benefits of automation while keeping the human in the loop. In recent years, providing additional visual feedback has been found to provide benefits to HA interfaces by complementing their advantages and mitigating their weaknesses. However, the...

The Effect of Complementing Haptic Shared Control with Visual Feedback on Driving Behaviour during Overtake Manoeuvres

Driving with driver assistance systems utilising haptic shared control (HSC) can lead to annoyance, or even disuse, when the intent of both entities differs. In order to increase compliance and acceptance of these systems, this study explores two types of visual information projected onto the outside scenery. One visualisation portrays only the...

Complementing Automotive Haptic Shared Control with Visual Feedback for Obstacle Avoidance

The technological advancements in the automotive industry have enabled the automation of numerous routine driving tasks. As a result, the art of driving has become a control task with a strong supervisory character, including the common human factor issues. Haptic Shared Control has been shown to be useful in keeping the driver in-the-loop by...

Complementing Haptic Shared Control with visual feedback for obstacle avoidance

For automated vehicles (SAE Level 2-3) part of the challenge lies in communicating to the driver what control actions the automation is taking and will take, and what its capabilities are. A promising approach is haptic shared control (HSC), which uses continuous torques on the steering wheel to communicate the automation’s current control...

Improving training of laparoscopic tissue manipulation skills using various visual force feedback types

Background Visual force feedback allows trainees to learn laparoscopic tissue manipulation skills. The aim of this experimental study was to find the most efficient visual force feedback method to acquire these skills. Retention and transfer validity to an untrained task were assessed. Methods Medical students without prior experience in...

YOGlove. Application of smart materials materialsin yoga wearable

The YOGlove is the first yoga wearable that acts as a full-time yoga instructor providing visual guidance utilizing smart materials and printed technologies. The real-time visual feedback aims at safe and efficient practice that tackles the wrist injury prevention right at its core. Among other unique attributes this gives a real competitive...

The Contribution of Visual Feedback to Movement Control in a Visuomotor Tracking Task

The aim of this study was to determine if and how specific characteristics of visual information influence the motor control strategy adopted during a visuomotor tracking task. To this end, twenty healthy subjects and two stroke patients were measured. Changes in wrist joint admittance (i.e., wrist rotations due to external forces) due to...

Neck muscle control patterns in 3D isometric experiments

The better understanding of neuromuscular control of the human neck is of critical importance to understand whiplash injury and neurological movement disorders. Isometric experiments using electromyography (EMG) are an appropriate method to study neuromuscular control patterns of neck muscles. As the human head-neck system is highly complex, it...

Selective control of gait subtasks in robotic gait training: Foot clearance support in stroke survivors with a powered exoskeleton

Background Robot-aided gait training is an emerging clinical tool for gait rehabilitation of neurological patients. This paper deals with a novel method of offering gait assistance, using an impedance controlled exoskeleton (LOPES). The provided assistance is based on a recent finding that, in the control of walking, different modules can be...