A Study on Quantitatively Evaluation of Operational Skill in Bimanual Manipulation

There are many researches to identify operator's dynamic characteristics in manipulating human-machine interaction systems. Analyses of operator's dynamic characteristics provide a clue to develop human-friendly systems that assists skill development. However, these researches mainly discuss single hand operations, and there seems to be little researches for two hand (bimanual) operations. To develop useful operational systems, the analyses of operator's dynamic characteristics in bimanual operation are indispensable. This research aims to clarify proficiency of operator's skill in bimanual operation. Concretely, the proficiency is evaluated by using an experimental human-machine interface for bimanual operations that provides three different mechanical impedances. The characteristics of operators are evaluated by tracking performance to references generated randomly and skills to draw geometric patterns in a two dimensional plane. In the experiment, the extent of proficiency was also compared with each other for the three different mechanical impedance models. It has been confirmed that the proposed evaluation method can successfully clarify the extent of proficiency of operators' skills. It was also observed that there was little difference in the extent of proficiency among the three mechanical impedances.