Virtual Surfaces and Haptic Shape Perception

Lateral force fields (LFFs) have been used before to generate haptic textures [3]. We propose that LFFs can be used to study haptic shape perception. We present preliminary results of an experiment in which human subjects interact with realistic LFFs. The LFFs encode shape information in the magnitude of unidimensional force vectors. Subjects explore the LFFs and classify them into haptic categories. We found that subjects can consistently perform this classification. This and subjects’ qualitative judgments of the stimuli suggest that haptic interaction with LFFs resembles the experience of touching a real 3D object.