The Effect of High C-D Gain on Human Dexterity: Toward Fingertip-sized Microscopy

Abstract

To better understand microscopic environments through a magnifier, moving the field of view is a crucial part of the exploration. However, in many existing microscopes, the field of view is moved indirectly through relocating the sample, not the microscope itself. We argue that such microscopes have forced the user to be an operator instead of an observer. To address this problem, we propose a small microscope that can be operated by fingertips, which are the most dexterous part of the human body. In this paper, we explore the magnification factor that is suitable for moving the microscope by three fingertips. In order to develop design guidelines for the proposed device, participants performed a pointing task based on Fitts’ law paradigm. The result shows the pointing performance declines as control-to-display gain increases but participants successfully continue the task until the gain was set to 1103. These results support the fact that fingertips can be used to manipulate with precision beyond the pixel level.