Accelerating Skill Acquisition of Two-Handed Drumming using Pneumatic Artificial Muscles

While computers excel at augmenting user's cognitive abilities, only recently we started utilizing their full potential to enhance our physical abilities. More and more wearable force-feedback devices have been developed based on exoskeletons, electrical muscle stimulation (EMS) or pneumatic actuators. The latter, pneumatic-based artificial muscles, are of particular interest since they strike an interesting balance: lighter than exoskeletons and more precise than EMS. However, the promise of using artificial muscles to actually support skill acquisition and training users is still lacking empirical validation.