Assessing Workload, Visual Concentration, and Motor Performance in a Fine Manipulation Task: A Novel Experimental Setup

The absence of tactile-feedback negatively impacts manipulative skills, causing reliance on visual-feedback and increased cognitive effort. Assessing augmented-feedback effects in simple motor tasks yields inaccurate results. Therefore, we developed an experimental setup to assess differences in workload, visual concentration and motor performance during a pick-and-lift task under single- (motor) and dual-task (motor and cognitive) conditions. NASA-TLX was administered to quantify workload, while an eye tracking system provided gaze focus data. Motor coordination metrics were extracted from forearm muscle activity and grasp forces measured through an instrumented object. The setup was validated on eight healthy individuals, proving capable of providing insights into motor and cognitive performances. Specifically, the higher cognitive load condition led to reduced focus on the object (-10.8%) and increased grip force (31.4%). Encouraged by the outcomes, we plan to use this methodology to evaluate the impact of augmented-feedback on motor and cognitive performances in individuals with tactile deficits.