Exploration of Velocity-dependent Scaling Methods for a Wearable Vibrotactile Texture Display

Wearable tactile displays can create the illusion of touching real textures by applying vibrations to the finger as it moves across a virtual surface. There are many possible methods of modulating this vibratory content with finger movement, each potentially best suited to different texture length scales. Using a vibrotactile haptic ring paired with finger position tracking, here we explore the advantages of three vibration modulation schemes that scale the frequency or amplitude of applied vibrations as a function of finger velocity. Ongoing psychophysical experiments will characterize trade-offs between ease of control and perceived texture realism for frequencies associated with both coarse and fine textures.