Spatially Separated Cutaneous Haptic Guidance for Training of a Virtual Sensorimotor Task

Haptic devices enable multi-modal feedback to a user when training to perform novel motor skills in controlled, virtual environments. Haptic feedback has been proposed as a means to provide additional guidance cues that might improve training efficacy; however, recent studies have identified draw-backs to haptic guidance, including reliance on guidance forces and an inability to distinguish between forces that are part of the virtual environment and those that communicate task completion strategies. Recently, we proposed a novel approach to providing haptic guidance that separates task and guidance forces. We used a kinesthetic haptic interface to communicate task forces and a spatially separated tactile skin-stretch device to transmit guidance forces. Our experiments showed that feed-forward control using this paradigm was effective for improving performance in a trajectory following task. In this paper, we explore the potential for spatially separated cutaneous haptic guidance to train a user to optimally control an inverted pendulum system. We present and execute a task and training protocol designed to determine whether error-based haptic feedback provided cutaneously can accelerate learning of a task, and whether participants can retain or transfer task skills even after guidance is no longer present. We found that subject performance improved while spatially separated cutaneous haptic guidance was active. Despite this finding, performance in the pendulum balancing task was not affected once the haptic assistance was removed.