Is the Haptic Tunnel Effective Tool for Motor Learning?

We studied the effects of haptic interface when learning a new motor task. The haptic interface was realized with the custom programmed Phantom Omni robot. The motor task was the drawing of the figures that were selected from the Bender/Gestalt test with the non-dominant hand holding the Phantom Omni robot stylus. The feedback for the success of the drawing was the drawn line superimposed over the target trajectory. Twelve subjects participated in the study. Results show that the learning curve for simple targets objects (e.g., square, circle) was very steep, almost twice bigger compared with the learning curve for odd objects (e.g., horseshoe). This indicated that for the analysis of the learning of motor skills it is instrumental to use completely new target trajectories. The comparison of learning with haptic teacher and without teacher shows that the haptic tunnel translates the real task into a similar; yet, different task, and that it does not impair the learning.