Roughness perception in haptic virtual reality for sighted and blind people

Psychophysical functions for perceived roughness, relating ln (magnitude estimate of roughness) to ln (groove width), were obtained for blind and sighted participants in virtual reality using the PHANToM force feedback device. The stimuli were sinusoidal surfaces with groove widths between 0.675 mm and 20.700 mm. Group functions showed a similar nonlinearity to those obtained in physical reality using rigid probes (Klatzky, Lederman, Hamilton, Grindley, & Swendsen, 2003; Lederman, Klatzky, Hamilton, & Ramsay, 1999). Individual functions gave a different picture. Of 23 total participants, there were 13 with wholly descending linear psychometric functions, 7 with quadratic functions similar to the group function, and 3 with anomalous functions. Individual power law exponents showed no significant effects of visual status. All analyses gave a power law exponent close to −0.80. The implications for theories of roughness, methodologies of data analysis, and the design of haptic virtual reality interfaces are considered.

[1]  L. A. Stone.  Subjective roughness and smoothness for individual judges , 1967 .

[2]  Helen Petrie,et al.  The use of haptic virtual environments by blind people , 1998 .

[3]  Cagatay Basdogan,et al.  Haptic Rendering in Virtual Environments , 2002 .

[4]  R. Klatzky,et al.  Tactile roughness perception with a rigid link interposed between skin and surface , 1999, Perception & psychophysics.

[5]  L. Marks,et al.  Perception of intervals and magnitudes for three prothetic continua. , 1972, Journal of experimental psychology.

[6]  Stephen Furner,et al.  Tactile display of virtual reality from the World Wide Web—a potential access method for blind people , 1998 .

[7]  Susan J. Lederman,et al.  A tactile sensor based on thin-plate deformation , 1994, Robotica.

[8]  Gunnar Jansson,et al.  The PHANToM used without visual guidance. , 1999 .

[9]  W T Maddox,et al.  On the dangers of averaging across observers when comparing decision bound models and generalized context models of categorization , 1999, Perception & psychophysics.

[10]  S. Lederman,et al.  Haptic integration of planar size with hardness, texture, and planar contour. , 1990, Canadian journal of psychology.

[11]  Cagatay Basdogan,et al.  Haptic Interactions in the Real and Virtual Worlds , 1999, DSV-IS.

[12]  Russell M. Taylor,et al.  Haptic Perception of Virtual Surfaces: Scaling Subjective Qualities and Interstimulus Differences , 2004, Perception.

[13]  Marc M. Sebrechts,et al.  HANDBOOK OF VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENTS , 2014 .

[14]  S. S. Stevens,et al.  Ratio scales and category scales for a dozen perceptual continua. , 1957, Journal of experimental psychology.

[15]  Kenneth O. Johnson,et al.  Neural Coding Mechanisms in Tactile Pattern Recognition: The Relative Contributions of Slowly and Rapidly Adapting Mechanoreceptors to Perceived Roughness , 1997, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[16]  Kenneth O. Johnson,et al.  Neural Coding Mechanisms Underlying Perceived Roughness of Finely Textured Surfaces , 2001, The Journal of Neuroscience.

[17]  M. Hollins,et al.  The vibrations of texture , 2003, Somatosensory & motor research.

[18]  C. Connor,et al.  Tactile roughness: neural codes that account for psychophysical magnitude estimates , 1990, The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience.

[19]  T. Yoshioka,et al.  Neural mechanisms of tactual form and texture perception. , 1992, Annual review of neuroscience.

[20]  Mark Holliins,et al.  Perceptual dimensions of tactile surface texture: A multidimensional scaling analysis , 1993, Perception & psychophysics.

[21]  R. Klatzky,et al.  Feeling textures through a probe: Effects of probe and surface geometry and exploratory factors , 2003, Perception & psychophysics.

[22]  M. Hollins,et al.  Evidence for the duplex theory of tactile texture perception , 2000, Perception & psychophysics.

[23]  Stephen Brewster,et al.  Feeling Rough: Multimodal Perception of Virtual Roughness , 2001 .

[24]  I. D. Brown,et al.  VISUAL AND TACTUAL JUDGMENTS OF SURFACE ROUGHNESS , 1960 .

[25]  Ming C. Lin,et al.  Haptic display of interaction between textured models , 2004, IEEE Visualization 2004.

[26]  G. Ekman,et al.  ROUGHNESS, SMOOTHNESS, AND PREFERENCE: A STUDY OF QUANTITATIVE RELATIONS IN INDIVIDUAL SUBJECTS. , 1965, Journal of experimental psychology.

[27]  Ian Oakley,et al.  Guidelines for the Design of Haptic Widgets , 2002 .

[28]  Susan J. Lederman,et al.  PERCEIVING ROUGHNESS VIA A RIGID PROBE: PSYCHOPHYSICAL EFFECTS OF EXPLORATION SPEED AND MODE OF TOUCH , 1999 .

[29]  Susan J. Lederman,et al.  Roughness and spatial density judgments on visual and haptic textures using virtual reality , 2004 .

[30]  Calle Sjöström,et al.  The IT potential of haptics: Touch access for people with disabilities , 1999 .

[31]  John Cohen.  The World of Touch , 1952, Nature.

[32]  Helen Petrie,et al.  Computer Access by Visually Impaired People , 2002 .

[33]  M. M. Taylor,et al.  Fingertip force, surface geometry, and the perception of roughness by active touch , 1972 .

[34]  Susan J. Lederman,et al.  Tactile estimation of the roughness of gratings yields a graded response in the human brain: an fMRI study , 2005, NeuroImage.

[35]  Wright-Patterson Afb,et al.  Judging the Orientation of Sinusoidal and Square-Wave Virtual Gratings Presented via 2-DOF and 3-DOF Haptic Interfaces 1 , 2000 .

[36]  S. S. Stevens,et al.  The scaling of subjective roughness and smoothness. , 1962, Journal of experimental psychology.

[37]  Gunnar Jansson,et al.  Can a haptic force feedback display provide visually impaired people with useful information about texture roughness and 3D form of virtual objects , 1998 .

[38]  William S. Harwin,et al.  Interaction of Visual and Haptic Information in Simulated Environments: Texture Perception , 2000, Haptic Human-Computer Interaction.

[39]  Susan J. Lederman,et al.  Perceiving Surface Roughness via a Rigid Probe: Effects of Exploration Speed and Mode of Touch , 1999 .

[40]  Susan J. Lederman,et al.  Q’Hand: A fully automated apparatus for studying haptic processing of spatially distributed inputs , 1991 .

[41]  S J Bolanowski,et al.  Subjective magnitude of tactile roughness. , 1999, Somatosensory & motor research.

[42]  Gunnar Jansson.  Perceiving complex virtual scenes without visual guidance , 2002 .

[43]  Hong Z. Tan,et al.  Toward realistic haptic rendering of surface textures , 2004 .