Recent work has shown that vibrotactile feedback in the form of amplitude modulation has the potential to aid surgeons in perceiving force information during laparoscopic surgery. However, the effect of varying other aspects of the vibration signal, such as frequency, has not yet been studied. The goal of this research was to determine whether vibrotactile feedback using frequency modulation can improve a surgeon's performance in a tissue-probing task. A vibration device was designed to be applied to the subjects' non-operating arm during surgery. Ten subjects completed a task that involved probing pairs of simulated tissue samples to identify compliance differences. Subjects completed the task under four feedback conditions: 1) vibration feedback with frequency modulation, 2) vibration feedback with spatial mapping cues, 3) vibration feedback with both frequency modulation and spatial mapping cues, and 4) no vibration feedback. Subjects performed the task in each feedback condition under two vision conditions: 1) vision, and 2) no vision. Results show that, collectively, subjects performed better with vibration feedback, but the 3 different vibration conditions were not significantly different. Observation of individual subject results revealed that each subject performed significantly better in one of the three vibration conditions, with the best vibration condition being different for each subject. These results suggest that force feedback in the form of rotational frequency modulation and spatial mapping is not universally helpful, but may be useful for a subset of the population.
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