Reality-Based Models for Vibration Feedback in Virtual Environments

Reality-based modeling of vibrations has been used to enhance the haptic display of virtual environments for impact events such as tapping, although the bandwidths of many haptic displays make it difficult to accurately replicate the measured vibrations. We propose modifying reality-based vibration parameters through a series of perceptual experiments with a haptic display. We created a vibration feedback model, a decaying sinusoidal waveform, by measuring the acceleration of the stylus of a three degree-of-freedom haptic display as a human user tapped it on several real materials. For some materials, the measured parameters (amplitude, frequency, and decay rate) were greater than the bandwidth of the haptic display; therefore, the haptic device was not capable of actively displaying all the vibration models. A series of perceptual experiments, where human users rated the realism of various parameter combinations, were performed to further enhance the realism of the vibration display for impact events given these limitations. The results provided different parameters than those derived strictly from acceleration data. Additional experiments verified the effectiveness of these modified model parameters by showing that users could differentiate between materials in a virtual environment.