M³-Rowing Simulator

The presented work will evaluate not only augmented concurrent visual feedback, which is most commonly applied, but also auditory and haptic feedback. In training, a rower must observe the environment, e.g. waves and other boats. Consequently, the visual sense is already loaded. Therefore, it might be better to provide augmented feedback about the errors in another modality, e.g. with sound via headphones, or in a multimodal way, e.g. audiovisually.

Each modality has its specific advantages, e.g. spatial information can be very well provided by visualizations and temporal information by sound. Haptic feedback can physically guide or assist the movement. We try to find out how the feedback should be designed and in which modality/modalities it should be provided in order to optimise complex motor learning.

More pictures about the Augmented Feedback

In general, the M3 Rowing Simulator is used for the experiments. Different feedback designs have already been developed and evaluated in studies.

For example, deviation in oar position was visualized by superposition of the learner's oar and the target oar. A trace was drawn when the oar blade deviated from the target trajectory to provide information about the last three cycles.

Sound properties such as pitch and loudness but also instruments and music were used to continuously represent an error. In another approach, the oar movement was sonified (movement sonification), i.e. a change in the horizontal oar angle was mapped to a change in pitch.

With our haptic interface, the r3 Rope Robot, we have investigated haptic strategies such as force fields to guide or disturb movements.

More pictures about the Augmented Feedback