The research reported here was part of a larger program sponsored by the US Army to investigate the role of human personal spatial perception abilities on motor learning, and the role of simulation in training for complex motor tasks. Two general questions were considered. First, do an individual’s spatial perception skills affect his or her ability to manipulate a remotely operated (“teleoperated”) robot through mazes? Second, does improved sensory feedback from such a robot compensate for individual differences in such skills?

Twelve male participants were tested to rate their personal abilities to recognize and manipulate shapes. Their numerical scores ranged from 24 percent to 69 percent. Next, each of the subjects remotely navigated a robot through test mazes, using various combinations of video observation, audio feedback of robot motor speed, and sonar detection of obstacles and walls in the mazes. The sonar signals were sensed by the operators as a feeling of touch (a “vibrotactile” sensation), using a sensor-equipped glove. The measure of performance was time to task completion. The authors conclude that spatial perception skills are critical in predicting performance. Oddly, there is no discussion of their experimental result that adding “vibrotactile” (sonar) detection to video observation sharply improved the performance of those operators with the poorest innate spatial perception skills.