Manually Acquiring Targets from Multiple Viewpoints Using Video Feedback

TL;DR

This study investigates how camera viewpoint affects performance in psychomotor targeting tasks, revealing that certain viewpoints and transitions improve accuracy and efficiency, with implications for optimizing visual feedback in restricted environments.

Contribution

It provides empirical evidence on how static and dynamic viewpoints influence task performance, highlighting the importance of minimizing rotations within the manipulation plane and the potential of PA adjustments.

Findings

Viewpoint azimuthal angle significantly affects performance.

180° viewpoint transition improves task efficiency.

PA rotations have negligible impact on performance.

Abstract

Objective: The effect of camera viewpoint was studied when performing visually obstructed psychomotor targeting tasks. Background: Previous research in laparoscopy and robotic teleoperation found that complex perceptual-motor adaptations associated with misaligned viewpoints corresponded to degraded performance in manipulation. Because optimal camera positioning is often unavailable in restricted environments, alternative viewpoints that might mitigate performance effects are not obvious. Methods: A virtual keyboard-controlled targeting task was remotely distributed to workers of Amazon Mechanical Turk. The experiment was performed by 192 subjects for a static viewpoint with independent parameters of target direction, Fitts' law index of difficulty, viewpoint azimuthal angle (AA), and viewpoint polar angle (PA). A dynamic viewpoint experiment was also performed by 112 subjects in which the viewpoint AA changed after every trial. Results: AA and target direction had significant effects on performance for the static viewpoint experiment. Movement time and travel distance increased while AA increased until there was a discrete improvement in performance for 180{\deg}. Increasing AA from 225{\deg} to 315{\deg} linearly decreased movement time and distance. There were significant main effects of current AA and magnitude of transition for the dynamic viewpoint experiment. Orthogonal direction and no-change viewpoint transitions least affected performance. Conclusions: Viewpoint selection should aim to minimize associated rotations within the manipulation plane when performing targeting tasks whether implementing a static or dynamic viewing solution. Because PA rotations had negligible performance effects, PA adjustments may extend the space of viable viewpoints. Applications: These results can inform viewpoint-selection for visual feedback during psychomotor tasks.