Haptic Guidance: Experimental Evaluation of a Haptic Training Method for a Perceptual Motor Skill

In this paper we investigate a use of haptics for skills training which we call haptic guidance. In the haptic guidance paradigm, the subject is physically guided through the ideal motion by the haptic interface, thus giving the subject a kinesthetic understanding of what is required. Subjects learned a complex 3D motion under three training conditions (haptic, visual, haptic and visual) and were required to manually reproduce the movement under two recall conditions (with vision, without vision). Performance was measured in terms of position, shape, timing, and drift. Findings from this study indicate that haptic guidance is effective in training. While visual training was better for teaching the trajectory shape, temporal aspects of the task were more effectively learned from haptic guidance. This supports a possible role for haptics in the training of perceptual motor skills in virtual environments.