System for performance measures of predictive grip in a dynamic haptic environment

Abstract

Virtual environments provide a powerful means of experimentally examining object manipulation. In object manipulation a key issue is the coor- dination of grip force used to stabilize the object in the presence of load force variation, such as those due to inertia during object movement5. Here we de- scribe the engineering of an application in which the SensAble PHANToM is used to robotically control a hand held object and provide temporally modu- lated force fields that can be varied on a trial-by-trial basis.. Visual display is synchronized with haptic display and the recording of the robotic endeffector?s position. Analog data from two load cells mounted on the endeffector capture the forces and torques generated during interaction with the varying force fields. The system is cuurently being used to study the learning of novel load force functions during object manipulation.