Mapping the Sensory-Perceptual Space of Vibration for User-Centered Intuitive Tactile Design

Abstract

In vibrotactile design, it can be beneficial to communicate with potential users about the desired properties of a product. However, such users' expectations would need to be translated into physical vibration parameters. In everyday life, humans are frequently exposed to seat vibration. Humans have learned to intuitively associate specific labels (e.g., "tingling") with specific vibrations. Thus, the aim of this article is to identify the most common sensory-perceptual attributes and their relationships to vibration parameters. First, we generalized everyday-life seat vibration into sinusoidal, amplitude-modulated sinusoidal, white Gaussian noise and impulse-like vibrations. Subsequently, the (peak) level, (center/carrier) frequency, bandwidth, modulation frequency and exponential decay rate parameters of these vibrations were systematically varied depending on the signal type. A free association task was conducted to reveal the most common sensory-perceptual attributes for each vibration. After aggregating similar attributes, the 21 most frequently occurring attributes were utilized in a second experiment to rate their suitability for describing each vibration stimulus. Principal component analysis guided the selection of six attribute groups, which can be represented by "up and down," "tingling," "weak," "repetitive," "uniform" and "fading." The observed relationships between vibration parameters and attribute ratings are suitable for future model building.

Perceptual Space of Algorithms for Three-to-One Dimensional Reduction of Realistic Vibrations

“…The most common approach is discovering semantic information related to perception by using adjectives as descriptors [40], [41]. In contrast, some studies have applied physical properties directly as descriptors to find systematic relationships between physical and perceptual properties because the responses to construct perceptual spaces are based on the apparent physical properties in tactile stimuli [36], [42].…”

Cortical processes of multisensory plausibility modulation of vibrotactile perception in virtual environments in middled-aged and older adults

“…The original audio-visual recordings recorded from the scenes were used as stimuli in the scenarios. Synthesized vibrations (sinusoidal, amplitude modulated sinusoidal, bandlimited white Gaussian noise) similar to previous studies 25 , 76 were used. These synthesized vibrations were rated to be of the same levels of plausibility as the recorded vibrations 76 .…”

Congruence-based contextual plausibility modulates cortical activity during vibrotactile perception in virtual multisensory environments

“…The audio-visual recordings originally recorded from the scenes were used, whereas synthesized vibrations (sinusoidal, amplitude modulated sinusoidal, bandlimited white gaussian noise) were utilized according to previous results 33 . The synthesized vibrations 63 had been previously rated by human users to be of equal plausibility as the recorded vibrations. It is known that vibration levels affect perceived plausibility of audio-visual scenes 64 .…”

“…The broad range of vibration levels was used for the rating phase to allow assessments of incremental changes in the subjective rating. The participants provided verbal ratings on a quasi-continuous Rohrmann scale with possible values from 0 to 100 33,63,64,66 with equidistant verbal anchors at 0 ("not at all" plausible), 25 ("slightly" plausible), 50 ("moderately" plausible), 75 ("very" plausible) and 100 ("extremely" plausible). The subjective ratings validated the anticipated difference between the high and low plausibility condition.…”