Human Haptic Illusions In Virtual Object Manipulation

Abstract

Two experiments quantifying distortions of haptic spatial perception in humans are reported. Human subjects interacted with programmable virtual objects simulated mechanically using a planar robot under impedance control. The psychophysical functions for haptic perception of lengths and angles were determined. Comparison of these two measure shows that, unlike the typical geometrical model used in robot control, no consistent metric underlies human haptic spatial perception.