Identification of real objects under conditions similar to those in haptic displays: providing spatially distributed information at the contact areas is more important than increasing the number of areas

Present day haptic displays have one or a few contact areas, the information being similar over the whole area. The aim of this investigation was to study the relative importance of increasing the number of contact areas and providing spatially distributed information at each contact area. Technical development was “simulated” in experiments with real objects where the information was constrained in ways similar to those in haptic displays. The results suggest clearly that the largest improvement can be expected if spatially distributed information is made available within each contact area. If that is made, an improvement of performance can be expected also with an increased number of contact areas. Increasing only the number of contact areas will not give the same result.

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