Virtual alteration of body material by periodic vibrotactile feedback

Abstract

Characters with body materials that are different from that of humans, such as metal robots or rubber people, frequently appear in movies and comics. While the abilities of their synthetic bodies can be easily observed from their actions, their somatic sensations are more difficult to appreciat e. Our aim in this work is to simulate the alteration of the material of the human body by means of vibrotactile feedback. The feedback represents the properties of the materials and is periodically applied to the elbow joint in synchrony with the elbow angle. This simulated sensation of having a different body material gives us the feeling of those characters. This technique can also be applied to improve maneuverability in the teleoperation of master-slave systems because it gives the operator a robot-like sensation.