What changes when
a robot lends a hand?

Robotic assistance can make a movement easier. We want to understand how it changes the person’s attention, effort, and active contribution.

Our goal is to identify useful measures of mental workload during assisted movement, then investigate how they could inform assistance.

Assistive robots may help people complete movements during rehabilitation, training, or daily life. But making a task physically easier does not necessarily tell us whether a person remains attentive and actively involved.

Understanding both movement and mental workload could help researchers design assistance that supports the user without unnecessarily replacing their effort.

CYBORG plans to study physical assistance and cognitive demand as separate factors. Instead of relying on a single outcome, we will compare brain activity, movement performance, and participants’ reported experiences.

This combined view is intended to distinguish physical support from mental engagement and identify measures that could eventually inform more responsive assistance.

Vary assistance and cognitive demand independently, then compare brain activity, performance, and self-reports across conditions.

The device and protocol are being refined with our faculty mentor. EEG features need validation during movement; task performance alone does not establish lasting learning.