Design and evaluation of haptic effects for use in a computer desktop for the physically disabled

Abstract

The human–computer interface remains a mostly visual environment with little or no haptic interaction. While haptics is finding inroads in specialized areas such as surgery, gaming, and robotics, there has been little work to bring haptics to the computer desktop, which is largely dominated today by the GUI/mouse relationship. The mouse as an input device, however, poses many challenges for users with physical disabilities, and it is believed that a haptically enhanced interface could have significant impact assisting in target selection. This paper presents a study intended to evaluate haptic effects used with a force feedback mouse on a computer desktop and a prediction algorithm designed to focus those effects on the desired target. Results of the experiment were partially successful and indicated future directions for improvement. The paper introduces the proposed framework and presents experimental results from targeting tasks using differing haptic effects with a group of physically disabled users.