Despite non-co-location, haptic stimulation at the wrist can potentially provide feedback regarding interactions at the fingertips without encumbering the user’s hand. Here we investigate how two types of skin deformation at the wrist (normal and shear) relate to the perception of the mechanical properties of virtual objects. We hypothesized that a congruent mapping (i.e. when the most relevant interaction forces during a virtual interaction spatially match the haptic feedback at the wrist) would result in better perception than other map- pings.We performed an experiment where haptic devices at the wrist rendered either normal or shear feedback during manipulation of virtual objects with varying stiffness, mass, or friction properties. Perception of mechanical properties was more accurate with congruent skin stimulation than noncongruent. In addition, discrimination performance and subjective reports were positively influenced by congruence. This study demonstrates that users can perceive mechanical properties via haptic feedback provided at the wrist with a consistent mapping between haptic feedback and interaction forces at the fingertips, regardless of congruence.
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Haptic Feedback Relocation from the Fingertips to the Wrist for Two-Finger Manipulation in Virtual Reality
Relocation of haptic feedback from the fingertips to the wrist has been considered as a way to enable haptic interaction with mixed reality virtual environments while leaving the fingers free for other tasks. We present a pair of wrist-worn tactile haptic devices and a virtual environment to study how various mappings between fingers and tactors affect task performance. The haptic feedback rendered to the wrist reflects the interaction forces occurring between a virtual object and virtual avatars controlled by the index finger and thumb. We performed a user study comparing four different finger-to-tactor haptic feedback mappings and one no-feedback condition as a control. We evaluated users' ability to perform a simple pick-and-place task via the metrics of task completion time, path length of the fingers and virtual cube, and magnitudes of normal and shear forces at the fingertips. We found that multiple mappings were effective, and there was a greater impact when visual cues were limited. We discuss the limitations of our approach and describe next steps toward multi-degree-of-freedom haptic rendering for wrist-worn devices to improve task performance in virtual environments.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1830163
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10387801
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 628 to 633
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Recent advances in extended reality (XR) technologies make seeing and hearing virtual objects commonplace, yet strategies for synthesizing haptic interactions with virtual objects continue to be limited. Two design principles govern the rendering of believable and intuitive haptic feedback: movement through open space must feel “free” while contact with virtual objects must feel stiff. Herein, a novel multisensory approach that conveys proprioception and effort through illusory visual feedback and refers to the wrist, via a bracelet interface, discrete and continuous interaction forces that would otherwise occur at the hands and fingertips, is presented. Results demonstrate that users reliably discriminate the stiffness of virtual buttons when provided with multisensory pseudohaptic feedback, comprising tactile pseudohaptic feedback (discrete vibrotactile feedback and continuous squeeze cues in a bracelet interface) and visual pseudohaptic illusions of touch interactions. Compared to the use of tactile or visual pseudohaptic feedback alone, multisensory pseudohaptic feedback expands the range of physical stiffnesses that are intuitively associated with the rendered virtual interactions and reduces individual differences in physical‐to‐virtual stiffness mappings. This multisensory approach, which leaves users' hands unencumbered, provides a flexible framework for synthesizing a wide array of touch‐enabled interactions in XR, with great potential for enhancing user experiences.
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Current commercially available robotic minimally invasive surgery (RMIS) platforms provide no haptic feedback of tool interactions with the surgical environment. As a consequence, novice robotic surgeons must rely exclusively on visual feedback to sense their physical interactions with the surgical environment. This technical limitation can make it challenging and time-consuming to train novice surgeons to proficiency in RMIS. Extensive prior research has demonstrated that incorporating haptic feedback is effective at improving surgical training task performance. However, few studies have investigated the utility of providing feedback of multiple modalities of haptic feedback simultaneously (multi-modality haptic feedback) in this context, and these studies have presented mixed results regarding its efficacy. Furthermore, the inability to generalize and compare these mixed results has limited our ability to understand why they can vary significantly between studies. Therefore, we have developed a generalized, modular multi-modality haptic feedback and data acquisition framework leveraging the real-time data acquisition and streaming capabilities of the Robot Operating System (ROS). In our preliminary study using this system, participants complete a peg transfer task using a da Vinci robot while receiving haptic feedback of applied forces, contact accelerations, or both via custom wrist-worn haptic devices. Results highlight the capability of our system in running systematic comparisons between various single and dual-modality haptic feedback approaches.more » « less
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.1109/IROS47612.2022.9981392
