Feeling bumps and holes without a haptic interface: the perception of pseudo-haptic textures

A Lécuyer, JM Burkhardt, L Etienne - Proceedings of the SIGCHI …, 2004 - dl.acm.org
Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, 2004dl.acm.org
We present a new interaction technique to simulate textures in desktop applications without
a haptic interface. The proposed technique consists in modifying the motion of the cursor on
the computer screen-ie the Control/Display ratio. Assuming that the image displayed on the
screen corresponds to a top view of the texture, an acceleration (or deceleration) of the
cursor indicates a negative (or positive) slope of the texture. Experimental evaluations
showed that participants could successfully identify macroscopic textures such as bumps …
We present a new interaction technique to simulate textures in desktop applications without a haptic interface. The proposed technique consists in modifying the motion of the cursor on the computer screen - i.e. the Control/Display ratio. Assuming that the image displayed on the screen corresponds to a top view of the texture, an acceleration (or deceleration) of the cursor indicates a negative (or positive) slope of the texture. Experimental evaluations showed that participants could successfully identify macroscopic textures such as bumps and holes, by simply using the variations of the motion of the cursor. Furthermore, the participants were able to draw the different profiles of bumps and holes which were simulated, correctly. These results suggest that our technique enabled the participants to successfully conjure a mental image of the topography of the macroscopic textures. Applications for this technique are: the feeling of images (pictures, drawings) or GUI components (windows' edges, buttons), the improvement of navigation, or the visualization of scientific data.
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