Evaluation of Joystick Sensitivity in Telemanipulative Microassembly

Telemanipulative microassembly is a promising research area which has attracted a great deal of attention in recent years. In these systems, precise movements and precise positioning are necessary tasks when low batches or prototypes have to be manufactured. Regarding these tasks, different teleoperator velocities might be useful. An experiment with human participants was conducted in order to find the appropriate joystick velocity and whether this adjustment depends on the task type. The participants had to track different paths and position the end effector of the microassembly system precisely. As dependent variables the tracking and positioning accuracy and the task-completion times were recorded while varying the joystick sensitivity. The results showed that tracking accuracy was best in sagittal direction and a joystick velocity of 0.090 cm/sec comprised the best proportion between speed and accuracy. Considering the positioning task, joystick sensitivities between 0.090 and 0.125 cm/sec yielded the best human performance for accuracy and task-completion times.