Effects of force feedback on operator's skills in tele-operated systems

The system studied consists of a human operator, a stick driven by the force generated by the human hand, and a plant (e.g., a robotic arm) whose input comes from the stick. The system output is the position which is to be placed on a specific location by the human operator. The force from the stick output can be fed back (as a reflected force) and combined with the force applied by the human. The goal here is to study the effects of the reflected force feedback on the skills of the human operator. The recently induced probabilistic skill index is used to evaluate the performance of the operator performing specified tasks. The tasks are quantified by means of difficulty index. Four cases of different reflected feedback loops are studied. For each case, experimental data were collected when a human operator was performing a task of a known difficulty index. The probabilistic skill index is then used to quantify the effects of the reflected force feedback loop. Thus, this study provides evidence for evaluating the relative effects of the reflected forces on operator's skills in the teleoperation.