Development of Tactile and Gestural Displays for Navigation, Communication, and Robotic Control

Cognitive demands on dismounted Soldiers are ever increasing. This is an investigation into using gestural controls and a tactile display vest to reduce cognitive, physical, and temporal demands as relevant to covert communications and robot control. Data was collected on 31 Soldiers for this experiment-based evaluation consisting of task demands of a typical rural reconnaissance patrol deconstructed into specific tasks involving a platoon leader role, a squad leader role, and a robot controller role. Results found that use of an instrumented glove and a tactile display vest was associated with a higher average percentage and faster average speed of signal detections when compared to traditional hand and arm signals. Glove-based robot control was also compared with traditional methods and evaluated.