Fitts' Task by Teleoperator: Movement Time, Velocity, and Acceleration

This paper reports two experiments about teleoperation with replica master controllers. In the first experiment participants completed Fitts' (1954) reciprocal tapping task by hand and with a teleoperator. Movement time and index of difficulty were linearly related in these data. However, times were much longer with the teleoperator than when participants completed the task by hand. The information rate for the teleoperator was 2.88 bits per second, averaged across conditions. The information rate for performance by hand was 16.98 bits per second, nearly six times faster. In the second experiment master handle velocity and acceleration were calculated for each 10-millisecond interval during tapping task trials. Most velocity observations (95%) made during the task's terminal phase were less than 0.45 meter per second. Many observations (20%) made during the ballistic phase were greater than 0.7 meter per second. Acceleration characteristics divided the participants into two groups. The low-variability group exhibited accelerations between −0.9 and 0.9 meters pers second2. The high-variability group exhibited accelerations ranging from −29 to 41 meters per second. Style or skill differences among participants may have caused the acceleration variability difference.