Contextual effects on robotic experiments of sensory feedback for object manipulation

Tactile and proprioceptive feedback for prosthetic hand users is assumed to be critical, yet there is no systematic knowledge about how to provide this feedback effectively. Haptic virtual environments are ideal tools with which to manipulate properties of object interaction to build a model of such feedback. This work shows the importance of the environmental context to capture results relevant to prosthetic hand sensory feedback. While an interface utilizing manipulation of a second-order oscillatory spring-mass system at its natural frequency did not show consistent effects of haptic feedback on motor performance, an interface based on manipulation of an object with the competing goals of overcoming friction without breaking the object showed an increase in task performance with the addition of haptic feedback to visual feedback. Contextual effects such as functional relevance should be considered in robotic experiments on the role of multisensory feedback in object manipulation.