TY - JOUR
T1 - A Comparison of Vibrotactile Feedback and Electrical Muscle Stimulation (EMS) for Motor Response During Active Hand Movement
AU - Korres, Georgios
AU - Park, Wanjoo
AU - Eid, Mohamad
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by the New York University Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates This paper was recommended for publication by Associate Editor Dr. Anna Metzger and Editor-in-Chief D. Prattichizzo upon evaluation of the reviewers' comments.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 IEEE.
PY - 2022
Y1 - 2022
N2 - Wearable haptic technologies have garnered recent widespread attention due to increased accessibility, functionality, and affordability. These systems typically provide haptic feedback to augment the human ability to interact with their environment. This study compares two haptic feedback modalities, vibrotactile and EMS, against visual feedback to elicit a motor response during active hand movement. Forty-five participants, divided into three groups, performed a task to touch their face and received one of three possible sensory feedback cues, namely visual, vibrotactile, and electrical muscle stimulation (EMS), to interrupt their movement and avoid touching their face. Two quantitative performance measures are used in the comparison, the response time (time elapsed from stimulation to motor response) and the error rate (percentage that the user fails to avoid touching their face). Results showed that vibrotactile and EMS feedback yielded significantly faster response time than visual feedback, while no significant differences between vibrotactile and EMS were observed. Furthermore, the error rate was significantly lower for EMS compared to visual feedback, whereas no significant differences were observed between vibrotactile and visual feedback. In conclusion, it seems that EMS feedback is preferable for applications where errors are not tolerable (critical medical applications), whereas vibrotactile is superior for non-critical applications due to its low cost and higher usability (more pleasant compared to EMS).
AB - Wearable haptic technologies have garnered recent widespread attention due to increased accessibility, functionality, and affordability. These systems typically provide haptic feedback to augment the human ability to interact with their environment. This study compares two haptic feedback modalities, vibrotactile and EMS, against visual feedback to elicit a motor response during active hand movement. Forty-five participants, divided into three groups, performed a task to touch their face and received one of three possible sensory feedback cues, namely visual, vibrotactile, and electrical muscle stimulation (EMS), to interrupt their movement and avoid touching their face. Two quantitative performance measures are used in the comparison, the response time (time elapsed from stimulation to motor response) and the error rate (percentage that the user fails to avoid touching their face). Results showed that vibrotactile and EMS feedback yielded significantly faster response time than visual feedback, while no significant differences between vibrotactile and EMS were observed. Furthermore, the error rate was significantly lower for EMS compared to visual feedback, whereas no significant differences were observed between vibrotactile and visual feedback. In conclusion, it seems that EMS feedback is preferable for applications where errors are not tolerable (critical medical applications), whereas vibrotactile is superior for non-critical applications due to its low cost and higher usability (more pleasant compared to EMS).
KW - EMS
KW - Haptic I/O
KW - Input devices
KW - User interfaces
KW - feedback
KW - strategies
KW - vibrotactile
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U2 - 10.1109/TOH.2022.3142442
DO - 10.1109/TOH.2022.3142442
M3 - Article
C2 - 35077368
AN - SCOPUS:85123801076
VL - 15
SP - 74
EP - 78
JO - IEEE Transactions on Haptics
JF - IEEE Transactions on Haptics
SN - 1939-1412
IS - 1
ER -