Sakamaki Isao, Adams Kim, Tavakoli Mahdi, Wiebe Sandra
Faculty of Rehabilitation Medicine, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada.
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada.
Assist Technol. 2022 Mar 4;34(2):148-156. doi: 10.1080/10400435.2020.1719557. Epub 2020 Jan 30.
Play is a vital activity in which children learn skills and explore the environment through object manipulation. Assistive robots have been used to provide access to play, and Forbidden Region Virtual Fixture (FRVF) guidance at the user interface could help the users make the robot traverse the play environment more efficiently because it behaves like virtual walls to follow. Eye gaze was used to indicate the user's intended target and generate the location of the virtual walls in a card sorting task. We eliminated the typical computer screen required for visual feedback to confirm gaze location, and examined the use of alternative feedback. In this feasibility study, first a group of adults without physical impairment tested the system with auditory and vibrotactile feedback modalities for the gaze fixation and with the virtual walls on and off for robot movement. Then case studies with children and individuals with physical impairments were performed. Even though gaze fixation feedback and the virtual wall did not improve the performance of adult participants without impairment, the feedback increased the speed and accuracy of the gaze fixation and the virtual walls improved the movement efficiency for the participants with impairment and a 6-year-old child without impairment.
玩耍是一项至关重要的活动，在其中孩子们通过物体操作来学习技能并探索环境。辅助机器人已被用于提供玩耍的机会，并且用户界面处的禁区虚拟夹具（FRVF）引导可以帮助用户使机器人更高效地穿越玩耍环境，因为它的行为就像要跟随的虚拟墙壁。在一项卡片分类任务中，使用眼睛注视来指示用户的预期目标并生成虚拟墙壁的位置。我们省去了用于确认注视位置的视觉反馈所需的典型电脑屏幕，并研究了替代反馈的使用。在这项可行性研究中，首先一组没有身体损伤的成年人对该系统进行了测试，该系统具有用于注视固定的听觉和触觉反馈模式，并且在机器人移动时虚拟墙壁开启和关闭。然后对儿童和有身体损伤的个体进行了案例研究。尽管注视固定反馈和虚拟墙壁并没有提高没有损伤的成年参与者的表现，但该反馈提高了注视固定的速度和准确性，并且虚拟墙壁提高了有损伤的参与者以及一名没有损伤的6岁儿童的移动效率。
