Comparison of Haptic Strategies for Human Guidance

This paper compares two human guidance approaches mediated by haptic stimulation. Motion Guidance consists in delivering step-by-step instructions to human users, that respond to commands with specific actions. The Sensory Augmentation approach enriches the human with the knowledge necessary to complete the task using a self-selected strategy. The two approaches were evaluated in a collaborative scenario with couples of participants carrying a bulky object under the sole guidance of haptics. Stimuli were delivered by a haptic belt according to three haptic policies. According to results, both approaches performed well when participants were aware of the direction to the target during the whole trial, supporting the idea of using haptics to convey environmental information to the users.