Augmenting the human-machine interface: improving manual accuracy

We present a novel application of a neural network to augment manual precision by canceling involuntary motion. This method may be applied in microsurgery, using either a telerobotic approach or active compensation in a handheld instrument. A feedforward neural network is trained to input the measured trajectory of a handheld tool tip and output the intended trajectory. Use of the neural network decreases rms error in recordings from four subjects by an average of 43.9%.