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Pointing with the ankle: the speed-accuracy trade-off

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Abstract

This study investigated the trade-off between speed and accuracy in pointing movements with the ankle during goal-directed movements in dorsal–plantar (DP) and inversion–eversion (IE). Nine subjects completed a series of discrete pointing movements with the ankle between spatial targets of varying difficulty. Six different target sets were presented, with a range of task difficulty between 2.2 and 3.8 bits of information. Our results demonstrated that for visually evoked, visually guided discrete DP and IE ankle pointing movements, performance can be described by a linear function, as predicted by Fitts’ law. These results support our ongoing effort to develop an adaptive algorithm employing the speed-accuracy trade-off concept to control our pediatric anklebot while delivering therapy for children with cerebral palsy.

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Acknowledgments

This work is supported in part by a grant from the Cerebral Palsy International Research Foundation (CPIRF) and the Niarchos Foundation, by a grant from the VA Baltimore Medical Center contract 512-D05015 and by NIH Grant R01HD069776-02. Dr. K. P. Michmizos was partially supported by the Foundation for Education and European Culture. Dr. H. I. Krebs is a co-inventor in the MIT-held patent for the robotic device used in this work. He holds equity positions in Interactive Motion Technologies, the company that manufactures this type of technology under license to MIT.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77, Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA, USA

    Konstantinos P. Michmizos & Hermano Igo Krebs

  2. Division of Rehabilitative Medicine, Department of Neurology, University of Maryland, School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA

    Hermano Igo Krebs

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  1. Konstantinos P. Michmizos
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  2. Hermano Igo Krebs
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Correspondence to Konstantinos P. Michmizos.

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Michmizos, K.P., Krebs, H.I. Pointing with the ankle: the speed-accuracy trade-off. Exp Brain Res 232, 647–657 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-013-3773-0

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