Abstract CREATING A NOVEL MULTIPLE-FREQUENCY BASED VIBRATION BUILT UPON HUMAN PERCEPTION AN.pdf

CREATING A NOVEL MULTIPLE-FREQUENCY BASED VIBRATION BUILT UPON HUMAN PERCEPTION ANALYSIS Yuan Wang, Martin J. Turner and W. Terry Hewitt Manchester Computing University of Manchester Manchester, M13 9PL United Kingdom Abstract Using the PHANToM Desktop haptic device, the absolute threshold and difference threshold of finger-hand vibration have been tested and numerically evaluated to assess the usability of this device for general purpose vibration research. In order to highlight the human response over a certain frequency range, a novel multiple- frequency based vibration is proposed to provide a new vibrotactile sensation. This novel vibration is generated using a band-pass filter, which is composed of two-piecewise tail-off exponent functions. Likewise other multiple-frequency based vibrations have also been produced; including white noise, pink noise and brown noise. To evaluate the usability of this novel vibration, a target-acquisition experiment with the aid of vibration was designed and implemented. The studies demonstrate: vibration significantly improves both speed and accuracy; a single frequency 120 Hz vibration and our novel multiple-frequency based vibration both achieve a good level of performance; and our novel vibration also has improved acquisition speed, compared with other multiple-frequency based vibrations. 1. Introduction “Haptics” means “to touch”, and broadly refers to touch interactions that occur for the purpose of perception or manipulation (Salisbury and Conti, 2004). Haptic sensation is normally classified into two categories: kinesthetic and vibrotactile feedback. Kinesthesia is often used interchangeably with proprioception, which refers to the awareness of ones own body position, movement, and equilibrium. The sense of position and movement is complemented by the sense of force within muscles and tendons, and has been widely used in virtual reality (Stone, 2000) (Salisbury and Conti, 2004) and visu