Haptic Discrimination of Different Types of Soft Materials

Abstract We interact with different types of soft materials on a daily basis such as salt, hand cream, etc. Recently we have shown that can be described using four perceptual dimensions which are deformability, granularity, viscosity, and surface softness [1]. Here, investigated whether humans actually perceive systematic differences in selectively vary along one these well how judgments the correlated to judgments. selected at least two material classes per dimension (e.g., hair gel cream for viscosity) varied corresponding feature viscosity gel). Participants ordered ten from each class according their main feature, addition, softness. Rank orders were consistent across participants repetitions. either positively or negatively associated dimensions. These findings support our notion multiple demonstrate people reliably discriminate artificially