Effect of Intermittent Haptic Disturbance in Motor Skill Training

Abstract

The aim of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of haptic disturbance where the intermittent force field will applied in training motor skill. A test group (4 subjects) was trained using intermittent divergent force field while a control group (4 subjects) was trained in null force field. The parameter such as error trajectories, motion smoothness and the trial time were measured and a statistical analysis was done in order to identify motion improvement when using the proposed training method. Both groups showed motion improvement in reducing mean error, mean number of zero crossing (indicate the motion smoothness) and mean trial time after training. Only the motion smoothness in the test group improved significantly after training, in contrast to the control group, which showed no significant difference.