Human hammering with an elastic hammer through a 1-DOF teleoperator with different feedback types

The experiment aims at studying human use of flexible tools. The research question is how different feedback types and quality influences human use of a flexible tool through a teleoperator. The task chosen for that is to hammer with a flexible hammer (115 g). The experiment setup is a hammer mounted on an axis of a teleoperation slave device, while the human operator holds the handle mounted to the master device. A target is mounted in front of the hammer such that it can be hit by moving the hammer handle. Different settings are tested with optimal feedback (no delay, visual and force feedback), delayed feedback, without vision feedback and without force feedback. For each setting there are ~40 trials. The goal given to the test subject is to try to find the best timing for using the flexible tool in the most efficient way, i.e. for hitting the target as hard as possible with the same effort.