<title>Using auditory and tactile displays for force feedback</title>

Abstract

Traditional force feedback or force reflection, which applies forces to a human operator's hand or arm muscles, has been shown in several studies to be beneficial to a person performing remote manipulation tasks with a teleoperation system. However, force reflection can have its disadvantages including operator induced instabilities in the presence of time delays. The use of tactile and auditory displays to present force feedback will be discussed. These displays can provide the human operator with force information without some of the disadvantages of force reflection. The design of the displays are explained, as well as an experimental study on the effectiveness of the displays for remote manipulation tasks. These displays compared favorably to traditional force reflection for basic force perception tests, and improve the human operator's sensitivity for detecting small forces. With a time delay, the displays improved operator performance for peg-in-hole tasks without instabilities. They also improved performance during degraded visual conditions. The benefits of using such displays for telemanipulation tasks is discussed, as well as potential applications and future research.© (1993) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.