Investigating coordination in multidegree of freedom control I: Time-on-target analysis of 6 DOF tracking

Abstract

In these two companion papers, methods developed in a series of studies in the 1940's and 1950's are applied to the analysis of 6 DOF control devices used in modern human machine systems such as teleoperation and virtual environments. Contrary to the early studies, the current work showed that the simultaneous time-on-target in multidegree of freedom tracking was higher than the product of component time on target scores. The distribution of linear correlation coefficients between the tracking errors of different degrees of freedom tended to be skewed towards the positive values. These results suggested that subjects' discoordination in early multidegree of freedom tracking studies was likely due to the limitation of human machine interfaces at that time. With well designed interfaces, subjects exhibited more coordinated trials than discoordinated trials in multidegree of freedom tracking.