Behavioral Indications of Object-Presence in Haptic Virtual Environments

Abstract

The success of many virtual environment (VE) applications relies on their ability to induce in their users a sense of presence. In immersive VE, presence is a sense of being and acting inside a virtual place, whereas in a nonimmersive haptic VE, it is a sense of being able to touch and manipulate a virtual object. This latter sense of object-presence is typically measured by questionnaires, and the current study aimed to find objective behavioral indications for it. Participants moved a stylus along the blades of a virtual razor and along identical virtual lines with haptic feedback but without the context of a razor. Our measurements show that participants' movements were slower and they exerted less force on the stylus in the razor condition than in the simple lines condition. This behavioral pattern suggests that some degree of object-presence illusion was formed, which caused participants to act more cautiously in order to avoid any harm from the virtual razor.