Human Perception of Inertial Mass for Joint Human-Robot Object Manipulation

Abstract

In this article, we investigate human perception of inertial mass discrimination in active planar manipulations, as they are common in daily tasks, such as moving heavy and bulky objects. Psychophysical experiments were conducted to develop a human inertial mass perception model to improve usability and acceptance of novel haptically collaborating robotic systems. In contrast to existing literature, large-scale movements involving a broad selection of reference stimuli and larger sample sizes were used. Linear mixed models were fitted to model dependent errors from the longitudinal perceptual data. Differential thresholds near the perception boundary exponentially increased and resulted in constant behavior for higher stimuli. No effect of different directions (sagittal and transversal) was found; however, a large effect of different movement types (precise and imprecise) was present in the data. Recommendations to implement the findings in novel physical assist devices are given.