Investigating the effects of exploration dynamics on stiffness perception

TL;DR

This study examines how exploration velocity influences human perception of stiffness in telerobotic systems, highlighting the importance of limb impedance and active exploration strategies in kinesthetic feedback.

Contribution

It introduces an experimental analysis of exploration dynamics on stiffness perception using a simple kinesthetic device, emphasizing the role of limb impedance.

Findings

Higher exploration velocities affect stiffness perception accuracy.

Perception performance varies with different angular velocities.

Results suggest the need for further investigation into body dynamics in kinesthetic perception.

Abstract

The utility of Human-in-the-loop telerobotic systems (HiLTS) is driven in part by the quality of feedback it can provide to the operator. While the dynamic interaction between robot and environment can often be sensed or modeled, the dynamic coupling of the human-robot interface is often overlooked. Enabling dexterous manipulation through HiLTS however, will require careful consideration of human haptic perception as it relates to the human's changing limb impedance at the human-robot interface. In this manuscript, we present results from a stiffness perception task run on a simple 1-DoF rotational kinesthetic device at three different angular velocities, based on participant's natural exploration strategy. We evaluated performance effects of exploration velocity as a proxy measurement for limb impedance and the results indicate the need to further investigate how the human body incorporates its knowledge of the body dynamics in kinesthetic perception under active exploration.