Using Haptic Communications with the Leg to Maintain Exercise Intensity

— The haptic sense provides continuous information during physical human-machine interaction. Humans can respond very quickly and effectively to such feedback, such as a driver making rapid steering adjustments when his vehicle hits a pothole. It may be possible for designers to take advantage of this interaction by providing users with well-designed haptic communications to assist in manual control tasks. In this paper, we describe an experiment conducted to test this idea. Subjects were instructed to step on a modified stair climber at a consistent workout pace while simultaneously completing a mental distraction task. They were provided with one of five different haptic communications to assist in maintaining their workout intensity level. Results show that haptic communications helped subjects

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: roman
• Authors: Aaron R. Ferber, Michael A. Peshkin, J. Edward Colgate
• Keywords: Haptic Communications, Haptic Sense, Robotics, ROMAN 2007, Well-designed Haptic Communications