Virtual active touch: Perceived roughness through a pointing-stick-type tactile interface

For realizing a tactile display for a handheld device, active touch movement should be represented on a small interface. We propose the addition of a tactile feedback mechanism for a pointing-sticktype (PS) input device. In this study, we describe a method for enabling virtual active touch with a cursor on the screen operated by the PS-type tactile interface without actual touch movement. First, to validate our concept, we compared tactile detection capabilities of roughness information represented by the PS-type tactile interface and the interface with actual touch movement. The experimental results showed that the PS-type tactile interface exhibited almost the same ability as the interface involving actual touch movement. We also found that the force-to-velocity scaling factor of the cursor movement had a significant influence on the roughness detection capability of the interface. In addition, to apply our method to devices having small screens, such as mobile phones, we tried to...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2009
• Where: HAPTICS
• Authors: Takahiro Yamauchi, Masashi Konyo, Shogo Okamoto, Satoshi Tadokoro
• Keywords: HAPTICS 2009, PS-type Tactile Interface, Tactile, Touch Movement, Virtual Reality