Effects of Uni- and Bidirectional Interaction During Dyadic Ankle and Wrist Tracking

Haptic human-robot-human interaction allows users to feel and respond to one another’s forces while interfacing with separate robotic devices, providing customizable infrastructure for studying physical interaction during motor tasks (e.g., physical rehabilitation). For upper- and lower-limb tracking tasks, previous work has shown that virtual interactions with a partner can improve motor performance depending on the skill level of each partner. However, whether the mechanism explaining these improvements is identical in the upper and lower limbs is an open question. In this work, we investigate the effects of haptic interaction between healthy individuals during a trajectory tracking task involving single-joint movements at the wrist and ankle. We compare tracking performance and muscle activation during haptic conditions where pairs of participants were uni- and bidirectionally connected to investigate the contribution of real-time responses from a partner during the interaction. Findings showed similar improvements in tracking performance during bidirectional interaction for both the wrist and ankle. This was observed despite distinct strategies in muscle co-contraction between joints, as co-contraction was dependent on partner ability for the wrist but not the ankle. For each joint, bidirectional and unidirectional interaction resulted in similar improvements for the worse partner in the dyad. For the better partner, bidirectional interaction resulted in greater improvements than unidirectional interaction. While these results suggest that unidirectional interaction is sufficient for error correction of less skilled individuals during simple motor tasks, they also highlight the mutual benefits of bidirectional interaction which are consistent across the upper and lower limbs.