剪力回饋和振動觸覺回饋對虛擬紋理的觸覺感知效應

Abstract

觸覺，是人類探索事物的重要感官，開發觸覺回饋裝置可以幫助使用者在虛擬環境中獲取更多有關環境的訊息，而觸覺回饋這項技術也充滿著應用領域與未來發展的可能，不僅限於娛樂方面，亦可以應用在擴充實境、虛擬實境的專業訓練上，或是提升遠端醫療手術品質。 在重現觸摸真實物體表面觸覺感受方面，先前研究大多只使用振動回饋來模擬紋理觸感，但只利用振動回饋，來區分相似紋理的物體表面十分困難。本研究開發了一種觸覺回饋裝置，將剪切力回饋和振動回饋相結合，在虛擬實境中創造與現實生活一樣的觸摸感受。剪切力回饋利用拉扯指腹皮膚對使用者產生摩擦力觸感，就如同真實在觸摸物體一樣，皮膚會因摩擦力而被拉扯。振動回饋則可以模擬現實中物體表面的紋理觸感。 本研究評估此觸覺回饋裝置新增剪力回饋的效用，並進行兩個實驗。首先是只使用振動回饋去辨識虛擬紋理，再者是同時使用剪切力回饋和振動回饋去辨識虛擬紋理。實驗結果顯示，剪切力回饋可以提昇虛擬紋理辨別的真實性和準確性。

Nowadays, haptic feedback technology has been applied to many applications to help users acquiring more information concerning surrounding environments. In this research, a force feedback device was developed to combine shear force feedback and vibrotactile feedback to create realistic lateral stroking sensations to user’s index fingerpad in virtual reality environments. The shear force feedback simulates the friction force which stretches the skin of the fingerpad during stroking on an object’s surface, and the vibrotactile feedback simulates the surface texture information of the object in the real world. To evaluate the effectiveness of the shear force feedback on this haptic feedback device, two experiments will be carried out. First is to render only vibrotactile feedback, second is to render both shear force feedback and vibrotactile feedback. The experiments show that adding shear force feedback can increase the realism and accuracy of the virtual texture discrimination, compared with only vibrotactile feedback presented.