The postural and control-display gain effects of distal pointing on upper extremity fatigue

Abstract

Pointing at displays from a distance is becoming common in both work and domestic environments. Ray-casting interaction is easy for novices to learn and understand, but this technique can cause physiological fatigue. To address this issue, the present study aims to investigate the issue of fatigue caused by joint-based pointing methods and Control-Display gains (CD gains) via Fitts' task. Ten healthy subjects participated in the experiment and performed multi-directional tapping tests with three joint-based pointing methods and three CD gains. The experimental results indicated that the joint-based pointing methods indeed affected the physiological and subjective fatigue of the upper limb muscles and measured body parts during distal pointing tasks. The wrist-based pointing method, which can induce substantially lower physiological and subjective fatigue, appears to be superior to the other two methods. There were no significant main effects of CD gains on either physiological fatigue or subjective Borg's CR-10 rating.

Abstract

Practitioner Summary: The present study investigates the issue of fatigue caused by joint-based pointing methods and CD gains via Fitts' task. The pointing methods affected the physiological and subjective fatigue of the upper-limb muscles. There were no significant main effects of CD gains on either physiological fatigue or subjective Borg's CR-10 rating.

Keywords::

• ray-cast pointing
• joint-based method
• CD gain
• fatigue
• Fitts’ law

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This study was subsidised and supported by a Grant from the National Science Council of Taiwan, R.O.C. (Project No. NSC 102-2221-E-011-091-MY2), for which the authors are grateful.