TIKL: Development of a Wearable Vibrotactile Feedback Suit for Improved Human Motor Learning (Lieberman & Breazeal – 2007)

Current Mood: studious

Blogs I Commented On:

• Josh Peschel
• Pankaj Rajan
• Aaron Wolin

Summary:
This is a hardware application paper with the goal of creating a robotic wearable suit to analyze target movement and provide real-time corrective vibrotactile feedback to a student’s body over multiple joints in order to quickly develop new motor skills. Their system consists of optical tracking (for motion capture using markers on the wearable device), tactile actuators (for proportional feedback at the joints), feedback software (for determining the vibrotactile signals), and customized hardware for output control. Their system was tested by having users copying a series of images on a video screen while wearing the suit. Their user study generally gave positive feedback on their system.

Discussion:
I didn’t know how to comment on this paper directly since its applications didn’t really relate to the core aspect of the course. Judged independently from the purpose of the class, I felt it was a wonderful system that also had a sufficient user study applied to it. I could see some merits related to our class if it concentrated more on the hand.