Effect of Dynamic Vibrotactile Feedback on the Control of Isometric Finger Force

This study investigates how controllability of force is influenced by concurrent vibrotactile feedback that is generated proportionally to the applied force. Three different models to provide tactile feedback are introduced: amplitude and frequency modulation and granular synthesis. Then, an experiment investigating the effect of the feedback models on force control is reported. The tactile feedback conditions were compared to each other and to a condition with no feedback in a force repetition and a force hold tasks. In the force repetition task, all the feedback conditions yielded significantly better accuracy compared to no feedback condition. In the force hold task, there was no difference in the accuracy between the conditions including the no feedback condition. The results suggest that dynamic vibrotactile feedback assists the force control in force repetition tasks.