Haptic Communication Tools for Collaborative Deformation of Molecules

Several previous studies have investigated collaborative approaches for processing complex environments. Beyond the improvement of performance and working efficiency, these studies highlighted two important constraints, which limit the efficiency of these approaches. First, social loafing which is linked to the redundancy of roles in the same group. Second, coordination conflicts which are linked to the limits of communication in standard collaborative environments. This paper addresses these issues by providing an efficient group structure to overcome the social loafing, which is then coupled with haptic metaphors to improve communication between partners. The experimental study, conducted in the context of molecular docking, shows an improvement for group efficiency as well as communication between partners.