A shape recognition benchmark for evaluating usability of a haptic environment

Kirkpatrick, Arthur E.; Douglas, Sarah A.

doi:10.1007/3-540-44589-7_16

Cited by 8 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…In contrast to the 15% error rate found by Kirkpatrick and Douglas in a similar experiment [8], the error rate here was just 0.3%. Explanations for this difference may include the user/device interface (stylus vs. thimble) and the size of the shapes being presented; the shapes in our study covered the horizontal workspace of the device, while those in [8] spanned only The white thimble allows the user to "feel" the shape due to the spherical encasing. This helps and enhances the experience, giving the user a sensation to identify as the "surface".…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 99%

The Touch Thimble: Providing Fingertip Contact Feedback During Point-Force Haptic Interaction

Kuchenbecker

Ferguson

Kutzer

et al. 2008

2008 Symposium on Haptic Interfaces for Virtual Environment and Teleoperator Systems

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Touching a real object with your fingertip provides simultaneous tactile and force feedback, yet most haptic interfaces for virtual environments can convey only one of these two essential modalities. To address this opportunity, we designed, prototyped, and evaluated the Touch Thimble, a new fingertip device that provides the user with the cutaneous sensation of making and breaking contact with virtual surfaces. Designed to attach to the endpoint of an impedance-type haptic interface like a SensAble Phantom, the Touch Thimble includes a slightly oversize cup that is suspended around the fingertip by passive springs. When the haptic interface applies contact forces from the virtual environment, the springs deflect to allow contact between the user's fingertip and the inner surface of the cup. We evaluated a prototype Touch Thimble against a standard thimble in a formal user study and found that it did not improve nor degrade subjects' ability to recognize smoothly curving surfaces. Although four of the eight subjects preferred it to the standard interface, overall the Touch Thimble made subjects slightly slower at recognizing the presented shapes. Detailed subject comments point out strengths and weaknesses of the current design and suggest avenues for future development of the device. This material is posted here with permission of the IEEE. Such permission of the IEEE does not in any way imply IEEE endorsement of any of the University of Pennsylvania's products or services. Internal or personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or redistribution must be obtained from the IEEE by writing to pubs-permissions@ieee.org. By choosing to view this document, you agree to all provisions of the copyright laws protecting it. ABSTRACTTouching a real object with your fingertip provides simultaneous tactile and force feedback, yet most haptic interfaces for virtual environments can convey only one of these two essential modalities. To address this opportunity, we designed, prototyped, and evaluated the Touch Thimble, a new fingertip device that provides the user with the cutaneous sensation of making and breaking contact with virtual surfaces. Designed to attach to the endpoint of an impedance-type haptic interface like a SensAble Phantom, the Touch Thimble includes a slightly oversize cup that is suspended around the fingertip by passive springs. When the haptic interface applies contact forces from the virtual environment, the springs deflect to allow contact between the user's fingertip and the inner surface of the cup. We evaluated a prototype Touch Thimble against a standard thimble in a formal user study and found that it did not improve nor degrade subjects' ability to recognize smoothly curving surfaces. Although four of the eight subjects preferred it to the standard interface, overall the Touch Thimble made subjects slightly slower at recognizing the presented shap...

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Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 99%

The Touch Thimble: Providing Fingertip Contact Feedback During Point-Force Haptic Interaction

Kuchenbecker

Ferguson

Kutzer

et al. 2008

2008 Symposium on Haptic Interfaces for Virtual Environment and Teleoperator Systems

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show abstract

“…Their findings, however, might not generalize to geometrically richer stimuli. By the same token, our results easily explain the poor performance of traditional haptic interfaces when users must deal with low curvature shapes [8], and suggest new directions for the design of haptic interfaces [9].…”

Section: Aims Of the Studymentioning

confidence: 78%

Local Surface Orientation Dominates Haptic Curvature Discrimination

Wijntjes

Sato

Hayward

et al. 2009

IEEE Trans. Haptics

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Abstract-Prior studies have shown that local surface orientation is a dominant source of information for haptic curvature perception in static conditions. We show that this dominance holds for dynamic touch, just as was shown earlier for static touch. Using an apparatus specifically developed for this purpose, we tested this hypothesis by providing observers with two independently controlled sources of geometric information. The robotic-like apparatus could accurately control the position of a contact surface independently from its orientation in space, while allowing subjects to freely and actively explore virtual shapes in the lateral direction. In the first experiment, we measured discrimination thresholds for the two types of shape information and compared the discrimination of real shapes to that of virtual shapes. The results confirmed the dominance of local surface orientation. We propose a model that predicts cue dominance for different scales of exploration. In the second experiment we investigated whether a virtual curved surface felt as curved as a real curved surface. We found that observers did not systematically judge either of the two kinds of stimuli to be more curved than the other. More importantly, we found that points of subjective curvedness were not influenced by the availability of height information.

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“…We did not find any significant differences between using single and multiple points of contact when curvatures were explored using passive touch. We also did not find any significant differences in the amount of time needed to arrive at judgments across the four different conditions, however, the time required to arrive at a judgment was observed to be shorter than reported in similar studies using haptic devices for shape perception [3].…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 72%

“…With displays relying on this assumption, judging shape and curvature information is clearly at best as inefficient as in the real condition of being forced to explore and judge the shape of a real object through the use of a stylus [4,1,3]. There currently exists ample evidence that distributed finger deformation due to direct contact is critical and in fact the key to many haptic tasks [5].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

12 Contact Location Trajectory on the Fingertip as a Sufficient Requisite for Illusory Perception of Haptic Shape and Effect of Multiple Contacts

Dostmohamed

Hayward

Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics

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Abstract.This paper seeks to demonstrate that haptic curvature perception can result solely from the trajectory of the deformed region of the fingertip due to contact with an object during tactile exploration. To test this hypothesis, we built a servo controlled 2-degree-of-freedom spherical mechanism called a Morpheotron. This device operates by rolling a flat plate on the fingertip during the exploration of a virtual surface while eliminating all other cues that are normally present, including kinesthetic cues. In carrying out the experimental protocols described herein, we found that subjects were able to perform curvature discrimination at levels comparable to those achieved when using direct manual contact with real objects, and that the highly simplified stimulus provided was able to give the illusion of touching three dimensional surfaces.

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A shape recognition benchmark for evaluating usability of a haptic environment

Cited by 8 publications

References 6 publications

The Touch Thimble: Providing Fingertip Contact Feedback During Point-Force Haptic Interaction

The Touch Thimble: Providing Fingertip Contact Feedback During Point-Force Haptic Interaction

Local Surface Orientation Dominates Haptic Curvature Discrimination

12 Contact Location Trajectory on the Fingertip as a Sufficient Requisite for Illusory Perception of Haptic Shape and Effect of Multiple Contacts

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