Hand acceleration impulse bandwidth during target acquisition: Implications for teleoperators bandwidth requirements

The purpose of this experiment was to provide data about bandwidth requirements for teleoperators. During teleoperation, user inputs are changes in forces applied to the master controller arising from changes in hand acceleration during execution of goal-directed trajectories, so human hand acceleration bandwidth sets an upper bound on teleoperator feedforward bandwidth requirements. Participants completed a set of computerized target acquisition tasks using a mouse, and the computer recorded the cursor trajectory. Movement time, positioning error, the number of acceleration-deceleration impulses, impulse band-width, impulse amplitude, and impulse period were calculated from the trajectory trace. As many as 6 acceleration-deceleration impulses occurred during a single target acquisition, but in most trials (96.8%) there were 4 or fewer. The average acceleration-deceleration impulse bandwidth was 5.63 Hz for the first impulse and 9.20 Hz for subsequent impulses. The average period was 265 ms (3.77 Hz) for the first impulse and 218 ms (4.59 Hz) for succeeding ones. Therefore, to completely capture hand trajectories, master controllers and slave arms must have acceleration bandwidth higher than 9.20 Hz. However, it may be that only the joints closest to the end-effector need to accommodate the highest bandwidths and ''shoulder '' joints may only need to accommodate 5.63 Hz acceleration bandwidth