Hapticus: Exploring the Effects of Haptic Feedback and its Customization on Motor Skill Learning: Tactile, Haptic, and Somatosensory Approaches

Numerous haptic devices have been proposed to support motor learning, such as a hand exoskeleton with mechanical linkages, a vibrotactile glove, and an Electrical Muscle Stimulation (EMS) device. Understanding the impact of each type of feedback on users’ learning performance and experience, as well as the effects of customizing the haptic feedback each user receives, is vital to achieving both efficient and highly motivating learning. To this end, we compared learning performance and experience while using these haptic devices for piano learning. It revealed the distinct characteristics of each device, notably, the exoskeleton was the most preferred despite certain drawbacks. We then conducted a user study to evaluate the effectiveness of haptic customization, allowing participants to customize the order of haptic feedback, demonstrating its advantages such as improved agency and performance. These findings would benefit haptic designers by providing more efficient and optimized haptic feedback for motor learning scenarios.