Recent research has shown that people find it difficult to identify haptic objects when they feel them through a rigid probe, such as a stick or a rod, One explanation for these problems is that people's memory capacity is not large enough for them to remember all of the information that they gained about an object while they were feeling it. This thesis explores the idea that working as a 'pair might be able to help overcome some of the problems with memory and help to improve people's ability to identify haptic objects. Research has shown that pairs have better memory performance on tasks such as recalling information and identifying previously seen information than individuals do. This thesis explores the difference in performance between individuals and pairs in identifying haptic objects in a limited context. It limits its investigations to investigating the differences in performance under controlled lab conditions using time limited tasks with a small set of participants and objects. The work in this thesis shows that pairs do perform better than individuals do in the conditions that were studied and that the differences are likely due to memory. It serves as an initial investigation into the topic and suggests that further work would be worthwhile to investigate the generalisability of the findings. The thesis also investigates how haptic based CSCW may alter the performance of pairs and presents two techniques that alter communication and task division within a pair. The studies of these haptic systems found that they did alter communication and task division in beneficial ways under the conditions that they were observed.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:649373 |
| Date | January 2013 |
| Creators | Pearson, William |
| Publisher | University of Bristol |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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