Improving contact realism through event-based haptic feedback.
Tapping on surfaces in a typical virtual environment feels like contact with soft foam rather than a hard object. The realism of such interactions can be dramatically improved by superimposing event-based, high-frequency transient forces over traditional position-based feedback. When scaled by impact velocity, hand-tuned pulses and decaying sinusoids produce haptic cues that resemble those experienced during real impacts. Our new method for generating appropriate transients inverts a dynamic model of the haptic device to determine the motor forces required to create prerecorded acceleration profiles at the user's fingertips. After development, the event-based haptic paradigm and the method of acceleration matching were evaluated in a carefully controlled user study. Sixteen individuals blindly tapped on nine virtual and three real samples, rating the degree to which each felt like real wood. Event-based feedback achieved significantly higher realism ratings than the traditional rendering method. The display of transient signals made virtual objects feel similar to a real sample of wood on a foam substrate, while position feedback alone received ratings similar to those of foam. This work provides an important new avenue for increasing the realism of contact in haptic interactions.
Kuchenbecker
Katherine J
KJ
Telerobotics Lab, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Stanford University, CA 94305-4021, USA. katherine.kuchenbecker@stanford.edu
Fiene
Jonathan
J
Niemeyer
Günter
G
D003196:Computer Graphics; D003198:Computer Simulation; D005246:Feedback / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D008954:Models, Biological; D009068:Movement / Q000502:physiology*; D010812:Physical Stimulation / Q000379:methods*; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology; D012371:Robotics / Q000379:methods*; D013314:Stress, Mechanical; D014110:Touch / Q000502:physiology*; D014584:User-Computer Interface; D014732:Vibration