Age and Gender Differences in Performance for Operating a Robotic Manipulator

This paper examines the performance differences across gender and age when operating a robotic manipulator arm and also seeks to determine which human factors are considered important predictors of performance for each group. To examine these differences, 93 participants were recruited and divided up into both male (46) and female (47) as well as young (46) and old (47). While men and women had nearly identical human factors, except for women exhibiting better dexterity, different navigation strategies were utilized by the genders leading men to perform the tasks quicker and with less overall moves than women. While task completion speed was affected most by working memory (WM) and spatial abilities for men, it was seen to be mostly dependent on physical abilities for women. Substantial differences were seen between the age cohorts in WM and dexterity which resulted in the younger cohort completing tasks quicker and with a higher rate of commands than the older cohort; no difference was observed in the total number of moves which provided evidence of a similar navigation strategy across the age groups. To improve task speed performance, older adults used all facets of their information processing and spatial abilities as compared to the younger group who used a narrower subset. To compensate for the aforementioned variations in important human factors, human-computer interface design considerations are suggested.