Interference Between 6 Degrees of Freedom in a 3D Hand Controller

摘要

A six degree of freedom (DOF) hand controller is a device that can be used forthe simultaneous control of multiple axes. Multi-axis control may be problematic as a consequence of interference i.e., the control of a certain DOF affected the simultaneous control of another. When input on one DOF always results in undesired input on another DOF, the nature of this interference is systematic (cross-talk). This was investigated in an experiment in which a compensatory tracking task was performed. In this task, one DOF of a cursor in a perspective display was disturbed (externally). Subjects had to compensate this disturbance using a 6-DOF hand controller. At the same time, they had to minimize input on the other (irrelevant to tracking) DOFs. It was investigated whether there were differences between tracking performance between each separate degree of freedom (X, Y, Z, Roll, Pitch, or Yaw). Furthermore, the effect of additional (irrelevant) DOFs that had to be controlled simultaneously (0, 1, or 5), was examined. With regard to the irrelevant degrees of freedom, the steering error thus was completely caused by incorrect, accidental, steering inputs. Error on the relevant DOF was a sum of this incorrect steering input and the disturbance signal. Both these errors (expressed in RMS scores) can be used to indicate the extent to which degrees of freedom interfered with each other.