Feeling through a probe

摘要

Subjects performed a series of haptic perceptual taks using rigid probes or the bare finger (control). In Part I, they made roughness judgments of raised-dot textured surface using small or large rigid probes or the bare finger. performance was compared using two different psychophysical tasks: magnitude-estimation (Experiment 1: "how rough?") and roughness comparison (Experiment 2: "which is rougher?"). In Part II, performance with a small probe versus the bare finger was compared in a haptic object identification task (Experiment 3). In Part III, we discuss the applied implications of this work. Overall, our findings indicate the viability o f vibratory-based coding of roughess through a rigid link and have implications for designing haptic interfaces for teleoperator and virtual-environment systems. In contrast, a substantial decline in haptic object identification highlights one limitation of using haptic interfaces that effect single-point contact.