Enhance Kinesthetic Experience in Perceptual Learning for Welding Motor Skill Acquisition with Virtual Reality and Robot-based Haptic Guidance.

Welding is an important operation in many industries, including construction and manufacturing, which requires extensive training and practices. Although welding simulators have been used to accommodate welding training, it is still challenging to enable novice trainees to effectively understand the kinesthetic experience of the expert in an egocentric manner, such as the proper way of force exertion in complex welding operations. This study implements a robot-assisted perceptual learning system to transfer the expert welders' experience to trainees, including both the positional and force control actions. A human-subject experiment (N = 30) was performed to understand the motor skill acquisition process. Three conditions (control, robotic positional guidance with force visualization, and force perceptual learning with position visualization) were tested to evaluate the role of robotic guidance in welding motion control and force exertion. The results indicated various benefits related to task completion time and force control accuracy under the robotic guidance. The findings can inspire the design of future welding training systems enabled by external robotic systems.