Effect of Haptic Feedback on the Perceived Size of a Virtual Object

Jaeyoung Park,Ilhwan Han,Woochan Lee

doi:10.1109/access.2019.2924743

Jaeyoung Park, Ilhwan Han + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1109/access.2019.2924743

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Abstract

We investigate how different types of haptic feedback to hand affect the perceived size of a virtual object. Multiple haptic interfaces are designed to deliver different types of haptic feedback to hand. In the preliminary experiment, we investigated the effect of cutaneous feedback on the perceived size of the virtual object. The experimental results indicate that the availability of cutaneous feedback resulted in an insignificant effect on the perceived size of the virtual object. On the other hand, the availability of cutaneous feedback led the participants to exert significantly smaller grip force than when there is only force feedback. In the main experiment, we provided haptic feedback to the dorsum of the hand to modulate the hand kinesthesia at the moment of contact with the virtual object. For the reference stimuli, skin-stretch or vibrotactile feedback was provided to a participant's hand along with cutaneous and force feedback to the fingertips. Reference stimuli were rendered only with cutaneous and force feedback to the fingers. The experimental results indicate a significant effect of the type of haptic feedback to the dorsum of a hand. The skin-stretch feedback led the participants to feel virtual objects with a size of 40 mm, larger than without the feedback. The vibrotactile feedback resulted in the perceived size of virtual objects with a size of 20 or 40 mm, smaller than without the vibrotactile feedback.

Highlights

Recent popularization of virtual reality (VR) technology is creating new demands for a mean that can let a user interact with a virtual environment more directly and intuitively
The point of subjective equality (PSE) estimates of object size were not affected by the availability of cutaneous feedback, which implies that central nervous system (CNS) compensates for the larger penetration due to larger grip force
We modeled the perception of object size with (1) and the experimental results indicate that the estimated finger spread Rkinesthesia was modulated when haptic feedback was applied to the dorsum of the hand, which confirmed our first hypothesis

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Recent popularization of virtual reality (VR) technology is creating new demands for a mean that can let a user interact with a virtual environment more directly and intuitively. We investigate the effect of providing haptic feedback on the perception of virtual object size grasped with a pinch grip. In addition to the perception of virtual object size, we study the effect of different type of cutaneous cues around hand on the grip force. The cutaneous haptic feedback interface can create the cutaneous sensation of touching a surface at the fingertip by moving a contact plate, with the nominal position resolution of 0.05 mm. It can exert a nominal maximum force of 7.8 N, and its weight is 28 g. The PSE estimate was compared to the size of the reference virtual object by using t-tests

PRELIMILARY EXPERIMENT

MAIN EXPERIMENT

Findings

CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE WORK