Toward the Construction of an Efficient Set of Robot Arm Operator Performance Metrics

Abstract

As part of a larger project to identify and validate relevant quantitative measures of robot arm operator proficiency, fifteen metrics of arm maneuvering and hand controller performance were defined and measured for 3-DOF translational movement tasks. Twelve freshly trained operators provided performance data for seven target-acquisition task scenarios involving a variety of distance combinations along the X, Y, and Z axes. Metrics included indicators of task component times, distance traveled, inefficient (inverse) motion, maximum velocities, amount of multi-axis control, and input control onset times along the three axes. Pairwise correlations of all measures and scatter plots of variables yielding strong intercorrelations were examined to determine the potential underlying causes of the significant relationships. By identifying subsets of metrics with explainable co-dependencies, the overall metric set can be reduced to a limited number of key metrics that serve as effective discriminators of operator performance.