Visual and Haptic Perception of Object Elasticity in a Virtual Squeezing Event

Numerous studies have been performed on the human perception of object's weight, elasticity or viscosity. Most of them were however based on discrimination tasks, and used or simulated very simple objects from haptic and visual information. We found that observers could make judgements on elasticity in an orderly way, and that all of the different stiffness values were correctly discriminated except the two lowest ones. It was found too that visual information, when available, modified the movements parameters, such as movement amplitude and mean manipulation speed, but did not help improving the results of the task.