Haptic robotization of the human body by data-driven vibrotactile feedback

In addition to the many industrial robots that support our daily lives, there are numerous fictional robots that have appeared in movies, comics, and video games. Many of us would be interested in understanding the experience of having a tough iron body, and perhaps even wish that we could become like these robotic heroes, if only for a short time. The question naturally arises: What would it feel like to be a robot? While we are seldom conscious of the activities of our biological muscles or tendons, a roAbstract The worlds envisioned in science fiction frequently involve robotic heroes composed of metallic parts. Although these characters exist only in the realm of fantasy, many of us would be interested in becoming them, or becoming like them. Therefore, we developed a virtual robotization system that provides a robot-like feeling to the human body, not only by using a visual display and sound effects, but also by transmitting a robot’s haptic vibration to the user’s arm. The vibrotactile stimulus was recorded using the actuation of a real robot and modeled using linear predictive coding. We experimentally confirmed that the subjective robot-like feeling was significantly increased by combining the robot-vibration feedback with a robot-joint animation and creaking sound effects.