title: Improving contact realism through event-based haptic feedback.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: Telerobotics Lab, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Stanford University, CA 94305-4021, USA. katherine.kuchenbecker@stanford.edu
authors.forename: Katherine J
authors.initials: KJ
authors.lastname: Kuchenbecker
authors.forename: Jonathan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Fiene
authors.forename: Günter
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Niemeyer
mesh_terms: 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