ONR Annual Review 1997. Tactile Sensing and Information Processing for Man and Machine Systems.
Abstract
Haptic interfaces, that apply forces to the fingertips of a human operator, can be classified as grounded or ungrounded. Grounded devices, such as SensAble Devices' Phantom or Immersion's Impulse Engine, are attached to a stationary object such as a desk. When the operator touches a virtual wall, a contact force is applied through the interface, inhibiting further motion. For ungrounded devices a contact force is felt but there is no impediment to motion of the arm. Little prior research has been done on the perceptual effects of displaying contacts with virtual objects using an ungrounded haptic interface. Experiments were conducted at Stanford to compare how accurately subjects could identify contacts with virtual walls using ungrounded versus grounded feedback. Two haptic interfaces were constructed and operated in three modes: with grounded force feedback applied to the wrist, with ungrounded forces applied to the fingertips, and with grounded wrist forces in addition to fingertip forces. Tests were conducted to see how quickly subjects could arrest motion upon sensing contact (measured as virtual boundary penetration) and how accurately they could distinguish among objects of different size.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Sep 01, 1997
- Accession Number
- ADA329927
Entities
People
- Gregory Kovacs
- M. R. Cutkosky
- Robert Howe
- Roger Brockett
Organizations
- Stanford University