Haptic virtual environments for blind people: further explorations with the Phantom device

The development of force feedback devices to add haptic information to virtual environments (VEs) has important implications for both able-bodied and disabled computer users. A study is presented in which blind and sighted participants used a PHANToM 1.0 force feedback device to feel a range of virtual grooved textures using both a thimble and stylus interaction device. Although there was no significant difference between blind and sighted participants, there were individual differences in the way the textures were perceived which have important implications for the use of haptic information in VEs. The stylus was found to produce more sensitive perception of the textures than the thimble, for both blind and participants.