Multisensory pseudo-haptic feedback for weight perception of virtual objects

Abstract

Providing realistic haptic feedback of virtual objects is critical for VR immersive experience, and there have been many approaches to simulate the haptic properties. Most of them, however, are limited to a small modulation range of simulated perception. To overcome this limitation, the current paper proposes multisensory pseudo-haptic feedback for simulated weight perception that combines slow-motion C/D ratio manipulation and EMS. In three experiments, we independently manipulated the C/D ratio and EMS status and observed the effects on the absolute and difference thresholds of simulated weight perception. From the results, we specify the effective range of C/D ratio that can be used to induce weight perception and show that the range can be more than twice widened by multisensory pseudo-haptic feedback. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the sensitivity to weight difference increases as the standard C/D ratio decreases, which provides practical design guidelines for assigning multiple levels of weight to virtual objects.