Discrimination of Virtual Haptic Textures Rendered with Different Update Rates

Abstract

This paper addresses the discriminability of virtual haptic textures rendered with different update rates. Two psychophysical experiments were conducted. In the first experiment, we examined the pairwise discriminability of textured surfaces rendered with different update rates. In the second experiment, we measured the discrimination threshold of update rate for a reference textured surface rendered at 10 kHz. The results indicated that as long as the virtual textures were perceived to be stable (i.e., free of perceptual artifacts), subjects judged them to be perceptually equivalent. These findings, when taken together with our previous findings regarding the effect of update rate on perceived instability of virtual haptic texture [S. Choi et al., (2004)], provide a general guideline for choosing an optimal update rate for haptic texture rendering, with explicit consideration for both control and perception performance.