This paper presents the case that using an external real-time vibrotactile feedback suit can provide better training for teaching subjects to mimic the skills of an expert.This is because subjects may not be able to mimic the very minute details of motion and angle of the teacher as they may either not be able to observable or may not present the relative position of various joints. Their system can provide the real time response at the joints where subjects are not meeting the criterion and as such , subjects get to know all the positions relative to other positions where they went wrong and hence can correct the same appropriately.
This kind of feedback supplemented by the conventional auditory and visual feedback would definitely help the learners to learn better by knowing the errors in the body kinematics by vibratory feedback at that points.The system uses a Vicon motion capture system to track motion and the suit contains the vibro tactile sensors that provide the feedback and needs to be worn during the training
Possible applications have been suggested as sports training, dance, and other similar activities. They also conducted a user study in which around 40 participants were included but only 20 were provided with the suits and rest 20 were trained without suits. It was observed that the participants with the suit performed better because of the vibratory response. It was observed that the users with the suit had a 27% improvement in accuracy and an accelerated learning rate of 23% over the non suited counterparts under similar rest conditions.
Discussion:
It was a nice paper well written with good explanation. I liked the approach however it would have been nice if legs and the upper body feedback could also be provided as wrong placement of the three parts of the body can cause injuries.Such a system also provides an excellent way to have a remote teaching school as a instructor may not be physically availabe and the less skilled students can be trained online. I had some similar work in my under-grad when I used ANN to teach less skilled drivers real time- steering control for driving.
2 comments:
This system actually frightens me a bit, because it reminds me of rats getting a dose of shocks for performing something incorrectly, heh. Though I don't really embrace this system entirely, I think it's an outstanding system for physical therapy. But your undergrad work for something similar gives me a better impression of how this system can be expanded.
Agree about the rats. This suit would be much more effective if it gave electric shocks. I think with the removal of such an expensive tracking system (or hope VICON drops in price) and making the suit less bulky, this system has definite merits.
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