Virtual Haptic Visual Discrimination Test

This paper presents a virtual HVDT system that simulates the actual HVDT using virtual reality technology. Our virtual HVDT system incorporates discrimination measures of different shapes, sizes, textures, and configurations. The users can not only improve but also evaluate their haptic discrimination capability by probing virtual 3D objects using one or two haptic devices. Our virtual HVDT system can be the potential substitute for the expensive actual HVDT done with real objects. An experiment was conducted in order to examine the correlation coefficients between three properties (size, shape, and configuration) of our virtual HVDT for normal adults. The results of this experiment lead us to confirm that our virtual HVDT can simulate the actual HVDT. Our work is an attempt to develop a tool for helping handicapped children improve their haptic visual discrimination capability using haptic virtual reality technology.