Cognitive Evaluation of Haptic and Audio Feedback in Short Range Navigation Tasks

Clinical robotic surgery systems do not currently provide haptic feedback because surgical instrument interactions are difficult to measure and display. Our laboratory recently developed a technology that allows surgeons to feel and/or hear the high-frequency vibrations of robotic instruments as they interact with patient tissue and other tools. Until now, this type of feedback had not been carefully evaluated by users. We conducted two human-subject studies to discover whether surgeons and non-surgeons value the addition of vibration feedback from surgical instruments during robotic surgery. In the first experiment, 10 surgeons and 10 non-surgeons (n = 20) used an augmented Intuitive da Vinci Standard robot to repeatedly perform up to four dry-lab tasks both with and without haptic and audio feedback. In the second experiment, 68 surgeons and 26 non-surgeons (n = 94) tested the same robot at a surgical conference: each participant spent approximately 5 min performing one or two tasks. Almost all subjects in both experiments (95 and 98 %, respectively) preferred receiving feedback of tool vibrations, and all subjects in the second experiment thought it would be useful for surgeons to have the option of such feedback. About half of the subjects (50, 60 %) preferred haptic and audio feedback together, and almost all the rest (45, 35 %) preferred haptic feedback alone. Subjects stated that the feedback made them more aware of tool contacts and did not interfere with use of the robot. There were no significant differences between the responses of different subject populations for any questions in either experiment. This study illustrates that both surgeons and non-surgeons prefer instrument vibration feedback during robotic surgery. Some participants found audio feedback useful but most preferred haptic feedback overall. This strong preference for tool vibration feedback indicates that this technology provides valuable tactile information to the surgeon.

This paper presents the development and evaluation of a smartphone application designed to improve accessibility for blind users. It uses the lightweight EfficientDet-lite2 model and the comprehensive COCO dataset in order to provide real-time object detection. The novelty of the application is in the integration of haptic feedback, which is activated when users touch objects that are detected on the screen, combined with audio notifications that announce the name of the detected object in multiple languages. This multimodal feedback mechanism helps blind users to recognize, explore, and move within their environment more effectively and safely. Extensive usability and user experience evaluation was conducted with blind and blindfolded users. The evaluation assessed the usability, effectiveness, accessibility, and user satisfaction and experience of the application. Additionally, a comparative analysis was performed between the use of haptic feedback and scenarios where haptic feedback was disabled. The results show a higher level of user satisfaction, greater ease of use, and significant potential for improving the independence of blind people when the haptic feedback is enabled. The findings also suggest that the inclusion of haptic feedback significantly enhances the user experience. This study underlines the importance of multimodal feedback systems in assistive technologies and the potential of mobile applications to provide accessible solutions for blind users.

EEG correlates of haptic feedback in a visuomotor tracking task

Haptic technology has the potential to enhance education, especially for those with severe visual impairments (those that are blind or who have low vision), by presenting abstract concepts through the sense of touch. Despite the advances in haptic research, little research has been conducted in the area of haptic user behavior toward the establishment of haptic interface development and design conventions. To advance haptic research closer to this goal, this study examines haptic user behavior data collected from 9 participants utilizing a haptic learning system, the Heat Temperature Module. ANOVA results showed that differences in the amount of haptic feedback result in significant differences in user behavior, indicating that higher levels of haptic friction feedback result in higher user interaction proportions of data. Results also suggested that minimal thresholds of friction haptic feedback can be established for a desired level of minimum user interaction data proportions, however; more research is needed to establish such thresholds.KeywordsHaptic User InterfaceThermal DeviceUser BehaviorInclusive Design

Slip feedback is an important cue in everyday object manipulation, but it is generally missing in tele-operation systems. To test the usefulness of simple, abstract types of feedback that warn the user about slip events, we tested the effect of auditory and haptic vibration feedback in a tele-operation task. Participants were asked to hold an object in a remote robot hand, and the force profiles that they exerted in response to slip events were measured. Haptic feedback did not significantly change the response characteristics, but auditory feedback did significantly improve response latency. A small but significant difference between haptic and auditory reaction times (60 ms) found in our control experiment might explain the difference between the feedback types.

Visually impaired or blind people are unable to assess or analyze obstacles and tasks they wishes to perform. Lack of visual feedback has kept their lives restricted. Therefore, numerous techniques are available for sensing hurdles and irregularities in their paths. The real challenge is to develop a fast and spontaneous actuating technique. From manual white cane to Electronic Traveling Aid (ETA) and haptic feedback assistive bracelet, each has its own importance in the field. In this paper, two techniques of haptic feedback are explored namely, Vibrotactile and Skin Stroking. Skin stroking is a novel technique to be incorporated in haptic feedback systems, it is a painless and comfortable form of a tactile display. Requirements of this system is not limited to guidance and navigation purposes only that is why this device was experimented in maneuvering guidance, rotational and translational motion of hands. Vibrotactile and Skin stroking mechanism were connected with an android application via bluetooth which controls the motion of subjects throughout the experiments. The results gathered from experiments signifies that directional differentiating cues were better while using skin stroking haptic feedback mechanism and more can be expected from this field in the future.

This study investigated the role of haptic feedback in precision peg insertion tasks conducted via teleoperation under varying visual resolution and communication latency conditions. Experiment 1 examined the combined effects of haptic feedback and the visual resolution, revealing that haptic feedback significantly reduces the maximum normal force and mental workload, while enhancing subjective operability, particularly in low-visual-resolution conditions. Experiment 2 evaluated the impact of communication latency, showing that the maximum normal force, operability, and mental workload are affected by increased latency. Notably, the maximum normal force is sensitive even to minimal latency (100 ms), whereas the mental workload and operability remain acceptable under lower-latency conditions. These findings underscore the importance of multi-metric evaluations, as different aspects of performance respond differently to latency. Overall, the results demonstrate the critical role of haptic feedback in enhancing task performance and the user experience in teleoperated precision tasks, offering valuable insights for the design and development of more effective and user-friendly teleoperation systems.

Haptic guidance has previously been employed to improve human performance in control tasks. This paper presents an experiment to evaluate whether haptic feedback can be used to help humans learn a compensatory tracking task. In the experiment, participants were divided into two groups: the haptic group and the no-aid group. The haptic group performed a first training phase with haptic feedback and a second evaluation phase without haptic feedback. The no-aid group performed the whole experiment without haptic feedback. Results indicated that haptic group achieved better performance than the no-aid group during the training phase. Furthermore, performance of haptic group did not worsen in the evaluation phase when the haptic feedback was turned off. Moreover, the no-aid group needed more experimental trials to achieve similar performance to the haptic group. These findings indicate that haptic feedback helped participants learn the task quicker.

A haptic gas pedal feedback system was developed at Delft University of Technology that translated the separation to a lead vehicle into continuous haptic cues (force, stiffness) on the gas pedal. During normal car-following situations, the haptic feedback cues were sufficient to reduce control activity and improve car-following performance. However, in more critical following situations drivers use the brake pedal to maintain separation with the lead vehicle. A deceleration control algorithm was designed that, in addition to the haptic feedback, provided increased deceleration upon release of the gas pedal during critical car-following situations. The deceleration control algorithm was tested in a fixed-base driving simulator experiment. Deceleration control improved car-following performance while reducing driver brake pedal control activity in the conditions tested.

Extended Reality (XR)—encompassing Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), and Mixed Reality (MR)—has emerged as a transformative technology in the domains of telehealth and remote surgical training. This review critically examines XR’s growing integration into clinical practice, with a focus on system interoperability, advanced haptic feedback technologies, and the implementation of virtual patient safety protocols. XR platforms offer immersive, real-time environments that replicate complex medical procedures, enabling high-fidelity surgical simulation and improving procedural accuracy. Interoperability between XR systems and telehealth infrastructures remains a challenge due to disparate standards, data formats, and latency issues. Meanwhile, recent advancements in haptic systems have enhanced tactile realism, allowing trainees to gain precise motor control and procedural confidence. Additionally, virtual patient safety frameworks—such as real-time error tracking, biometric monitoring, and protocol-driven interventions—are essential to ensure clinical accountability and reduce training-associated risks. The paper synthesizes findings from current implementations, evaluates technical constraints, and proposes a roadmap for scalable, secure, and clinically validated XR deployment in healthcare education and remote surgery.

In this study, a haptic feedback system based on AR glasses and electrical stimulation technology is designed and implemented to assess users’ spatial imagination ability. The system builds a virtual environment through Unity, combining the immersive vision of AR glasses with the haptic feedback of electrical stimulation hardware to capture hand movements and simulate the sense of touch in real time. Twelve subjects were recruited to explore the effectiveness of haptic recognition of geometric shapes and its association with spatial imagination ability. The results showed that shape complexity and size significantly affected the judgement results. In addition, the total number of correct trials on the experimental task showed a strong positive correlation with scores on the Spatial Imagination Ability Questionnaire (SIAQ), validating the validity of the paradigm as a measurement tool for spatial imagination ability. This study provides a new method for the optimisation of haptic feedback systems and the assessment of spatial cognitive ability, which can be further enhanced by expanding the sample and optimising the design in the future

This research evaluated visual and haptic feedback for enhancing operator situational awareness during multitasking drone operations, investigating how task complexity influenced feedback effectiveness. Two virtual reality experiments were conducted: Study 1 assessed three types of visual feedback (Static, Blink, and Shake), while Study 2 compared visual, haptic, and visual-haptic multimodal feedback across varying task complexity levels determined by target density. Participants performed drone operation tasks requiring simultaneous obstacle avoidance and target counting. Results revealed that dynamic visual feedback (Shake) significantly improved primary task accuracy, reduced cognitive load, and was the preferred visual feedback type. Furthermore, haptic and visual-haptic feedback significantly shortened obstacle avoidance reaction times and decreased cognitive workload compared to visual feedback. Task complexity proved to be a critical factor: while visual feedback sufficed for low complexity scenarios, visual-haptic feedback offered distinct advantages in medium and high complexity tasks, providing insights for complexity-responsive drone interface design.

This paper presents a human-scale virtual environment (VE) with haptic feedback along with two experiments performed in the context of product design. The user interacts with a virtual mock-up using a large-scale bimanual string-based haptic interface called SPIDAR (Space Interface Device for Artificial Reality). An original self-calibration method is proposed. A vibro-tactile glove was developed and integrated to the SPIDAR to provide tactile cues to the operator. The purpose of the first experiment was: (1) to examine the effect of tactile feedback in a task involving reach-and-touch of different parts of a digital mock-up, and (2) to investigate the use of sensory substitution in such tasks. The second experiment aimed to investigate the effect of visual and auditory feedback in a car-light maintenance task. Results of the first experiment indicate that the users could easily and quickly access and finely touch the different parts of the digital mock-up when sensory feedback (either visual, auditory, or tactile) was present. Results of the of the second experiment show that visual and auditory feedbacks improve average placement accuracy by about 54 % and 60% respectively compared to the open loop case

Visually-impaired people have difficulties to move around in unknown environments. It is even more challenging to do sports such as running. In this study, a wearable haptic guidance system has been developed that can help visually-impaired people to navigate on lanes of any running track individually without requiring external help. The system uses an RGB-D camera and a microcontroller to detect the lanes and to calculate steering angles for navigation. A skin stretch method is used to transfer the steering angles to the user as haptic feedback around the waist. Two user tests were conducted with four participants (one visually-impaired and three able-bodied volunteers) in order to evaluate the proposed system. In the first test, the participants were asked to identify the given haptic feedback on their waist while standing still. In the second test, the system as a whole was evaluated by asking the participants to run the 400 metres on a lane of a standard outdoor running track with the help of the haptic guidance system. The able-bodied participants were blindfolded during the tests. Number of lane violations, number of directional warnings, and total time of run were recorded. Results show that the participants distinguished steering angles with an accuracy of 83.3 %. The participants were also able to complete the 400 metres with reduced lane violations and directional warnings than the reference runs performed without the haptic guidance. Considering these results, we can conclude that the proposed haptic guidance system is a promising tool for visually-impaired individuals who wants to run on a running track alone.

Wearable robots have been mostly designed as exoskeletons, with segments and joints corresponding to those of the person they are coupled with. Exoskeletons are mainly employed to augment human body force and precision capabilities, or for rehabilitation purposes. More recently, new wearable robots resembling additional robotic limbs have been developed thanks to the progress in miniaturization and efficiency of mechanical and sensing components. However, wearable robotic extra limbs presented in the literature lack of effective haptic feedback systems. In this paper, we present a robotic extra finger coupled with a vibrotactile ring interface. The human user is able to control the motion of the robotic finger through a switch placed on the ring, while being provided with vibrotactile feedback about the forces exerted by the robotic finger on the environment. To understand how to control the vibrotactile interface to evoke the most effective cutaneous sensations, we executed perceptual experiments to evaluate its absolute and differential thresholds. We also carried out a pick-and-place experiment with ten subjects. Haptic feedback significantly improved the performance in task execution in terms of completion time, exerted force, and perceived effectiveness. All subjects preferred experimental conditions employing haptic feedback with respect to those not providing any force feedback.