Communicative Functions of Haptic Feedback

In this paper a number of examples are presented of how haptic and auditory feedback can be used for deictic referencing in collaborative virtual environments. Haptic feedback supports getting a shared frame of reference of a common workspace when one person is not sighted and makes haptic deictic referencing possible during navigation and object exploration. Haptic guiding is a broader concept that implies that not only a single action, like a deictic reference, is made but that a whole sequence of temporally connected events are shared, sometimes including deictic referencing. In the examples presented in this paper haptic guiding is used by participants as a way to navigate while at the same time explore details of objects during joint problem solving. Guiding through haptic feedback is shown to substitute verbal navigational instructions to a considerable extent.

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2009
• Where: HAID
• Authors: Jonas Moll, Eva-Lotta Sallnäs
• Keywords: Deictic, Deictic Referencing, HAID 2009, Haptic Feedback, Human Computer Interaction