An empirical comparison of the locations of haptic feedback in steering tasks

Haptic guidance has been investigated with force feedback for a long time. However, the equipment is expensive and affects the users' action. In this study, we use the vibration with motor to present user tactile feedback instead of force feedback. There are several different positions, inside the tunnel, outside of the tunnel and at the boundaries of tunnel, where designer can supply tactile feedback to the user. An experiment was designed to investigate how the feedback position affected user performance in trajectory tasks. Results showed that there was a significant main effect of feedback position on movement time. But there was no significant difference between three feedback positions in accuracy. Out findings suggest that vibration feedback should be applied outside of the trajectory as a warning signal.