Exoskeleton Training through Haptic Sensation Transfer in Immersive Virtual Environment: Fid-Bau Portal

Exoskeleton Training through Haptic Sensation Transfer in Immersive Virtual Environment

Ye, Yang / Shi, Yangming / Lee, Youngjae / Burks, Garret / Srinivasan, Divya / Du, Jing

Exoskeleton as a human augmentation technology has shown a great potential for transforming the future civil engineering operations. However, the inappropriate use of exoskeleton could cause injuries and damages if the user is not well-trained. An effective procedural and operational training will make users more aware of the capabilities, restrictions, and risks associated with exoskeleton in civil engineering operations. At present, the low availability and high cost of exoskeleton systems make hands-on training less feasible. In addition, different designs of exoskeleton correspond with different activation procedures, muscular engagement, and motion boundaries, posing further challenges to exoskeleton training. We propose a “sensation transfer” approach that migrates the physical experience of wearing a real exoskeleton system to first-time users via a passive haptic system in an immersive virtual environment. The body motion and muscular engagement data of 15 experienced exoskeleton users were recorded and replayed in a virtual reality environment. Then, a set of haptic devices on key parts of the body (shoulders, elbows, hands, and waist) generate different patterns of haptic cues depending on the trainees’ accuracy of mimicking the actions. The sensation transfer method will enhance the haptic learning experience and therefore accelerate the training.