The role of skin deformation feedback in haptic perception of virtual objects
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Through exploration and interaction, we rely on haptic information to help perceive the world around us. Haptic devices, which can provide controlled touch feedback, have the potential to improve the realism and utility of virtual environments. Traditional haptic devices impart forces and torques on the user, often through a world-grounded kinesthetic force feedback device. However, it is difficult for these world-grounded devices to match the unrestricted movement of head-mounted virtual reality displays due to the increased cost, friction, and inertia that comes with increased size. Skin deformation feedback offers an alternative, user-grounded form of haptic feedback that, when worn on the fingers, can mimic the cutaneous interaction forces experienced during object manipulation. These devices are not without their own limitations; size and weight constraints often limit the available force output applied to the fingerpad, and thus, the physical properties of a virtual object conveyed to a user. This thesis elucidates the role of skin deformation feedback in human perception of virtual objects to inform haptic device design and rendering algorithms. We started by studying the relative contributions of skin deformation and kinesthetic forces to weight perception. We designed mechanical thimbles to amplify the skin deformation forces felt on the fingerpad when grasping and lifting a real world object, and demonstrated that this changes the weight perceived by human participants. We then augmented an existing three-degree-of-freedom wearable skin deformation device, which provides feedback in the directions shear and normal to the fingerpad, with contact-event based haptics. Then, we showed that adding a high-frequency contact cue to shear-only skin deformation can serve as an alternative to shear-plus-normal skin deformation for a grasp-lift-and-place task of a ``fragile" virtual object. We also found that adding a contact cue to shear-plus-normal skin deformation feedback did not improve the performance of this task. Next, we developed a haptic illusion to alter the perceived weight of virtual objects by scaling inertial forces when using skin deformation haptic feedback. Through human participant experiments, we measured the changes in perceived virtual weight and validated the effect of the illusion. Finally, we combined our scaled inertial forces haptic weight illusion with a visuo-haptic weight illusion, non-unity control-to-display ratio, in complementary and conflicting manners to further alter the perceived virtual weight of virtual objects when using skin deformation haptic devices. These results give insight into how to use the limited available force output of skin deformation feedback devices to help users better perceive virtual worlds.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2019; ©2019 |
| Publication date | 2019; 2019 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Suchoski, Jacob Martin | |
|---|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | Okamura, Allison | |
| Thesis advisor | Okamura, Allison | |
| Thesis advisor | Cutkosky, Mark R | |
| Thesis advisor | Follmer, Sean | |
| Degree committee member | Cutkosky, Mark R | |
| Degree committee member | Follmer, Sean | |
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Mechanical Engineering. |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Jacob Suchoski. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Mechanical Engineering. |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2019. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2019 by Jacob Martin Suchoski
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
Also listed in
Loading usage metrics...