Haptic Feedback in a Teleoperated Box & Blocks Task

Haptic feedback is a desired feature in teleoperation as it can improve dexterous manipulation. Direct force feedback to the operator’s hand and fingers requires complex hardware and therefore substituting force by for instance vibration is a relevant topic. In this experiment, we tested performance on a Box & Blocks task in a teleoperation set...

Towards a test battery to benchmark dexterous performance in teleoperated systems

A high level of dexterity is becoming increasingly important for teleoperated inspection, maintenance and repair robots. A standard test to benchmark system dexterity can advance the design, quantify possible improvements, and increase the effectiveness of such systems. Because of the wide variety of tasks and application domains ranging from...

Task specificity of finger dexterity tests

Finger dexterity tests are generally used to assess performance decrease due to gloves, cold and pathology. It is generally assumed that the O’Connor and Purdue Pegboard test yield similar results. In this experiment we compared these two tests for dry conditions without gloves, and for dry and wet conditions with two types of Nytril gloves. In...

Manual performance deterioration in the cold estimated using the wind chill equivalent temperature

Manual performance during work in cold and windy climates is severely hampered by decreased dexterity, but valid dexterity decrease predictors based on climatic factors are scarce. Therefore, this study investigated the decrease in finger- and hand dexterity and grip force for nine combinations of ambient temperature (-20, -10 and 0°C) and wind...

Physiological criteria for functioning of hands in the cold

Hands are important instruments in daily life. Without hands man is hardly able to function independently. Proper functioning of the hands is determined by several physiological parameters. These physiological parameters in turn are influenced by environmental factors. In this view of the literature, physiological processes in manual dexterity...