Augmenting the Texture Perception of Tangible Surfaces in Augmented Reality using Vibrotactile Haptics

Erwan Normand (1) , Claudio Pacchierotti (1) , Eric Marchand (1) , Maud Marchal (1, 2)

1 RAINBOW - Sensor-based and interactive robotics
2 IUF - Institut universitaire de France

Wearable haptic devices are portable and unobtrusive technologies able to provide tactile sensations to the human skin. Their use in Aug- mented Reality (AR), where visual virtual content is integrated into the real world, has been little explored, especially for generating texture sensations. In this paper, we investigate the perception of simultaneous visual and haptic texture augmentation of real tangible surfaces touched directly with the fingertip in AR, using a wearable vibrotactile haptic device worn on the middle phalanx. When sliding on a tangible surface with an AR visual texture overlay, vibra- tions are generated based on data-driven texture models and finger speed to augment the haptic roughness perception of the surface. In a user study with twenty participants, we investigate the perception of the combination of nine representative pairs of visuo-haptic texture augmentations. Participants integrated roughness sensations from both visual and haptic modalities well, with haptics predominating the perception, and consistently identified and matched clusters of visual and haptic textures with similar perceived roughness.

Mots clés: Augmented Reality; Wearable Haptics; Texture; Roughness

Domaines: Automatique / Robotique

Erwan Normand, Claudio Pacchierotti, Eric Marchand, Maud Marchal. Augmenting the Texture Perception of Tangible Surfaces in Augmented Reality using Vibrotactile Haptics. Eurohaptics 2024, Jun 2024, Lille, France. ⟨hal-04554311⟩