Direct haptic feedback benefits control performance during steering

Abstract

Haptic feedback can be introduced in control devices to improve steering performance, such as in driving and flying scenarios. For example, direct haptic feedback (DHF) can be employed to guide the operator towards an optimal trajectory. It remains unclear how DHF magnitude could interact with user performance. A weak DHF might not be perceptible to the user, while a large DHF could result in overreliance. To assess the influence of DHF, five naive participants performed a compensatory tracking task across different DHF magnitudes. During the task, participants were seated in front of an artificial horizon display and were asked to compensate for externally induced disturbances in the roll dimension by manipulating a control joystick. Our results indicate that haptic feedback benefits steering performance across all tested DHF levels. This benefit increases linearly with increasing DHF magnitude. Interestingly, shared control performance was always inferior to the same DHF system without human input. This could be due to involuntary resistance that results from the arm-dynamics