Measurement of the Permissible Range of Consistency between Visual and Tactile Presentations of Line Grating Textures

Abstract

The use of real textures is the optimal way to present realistic textures in a VR (Virtual Reality) experience. However, a system may require the presentation of numerous objects in a VR scene, making the use of real objects impractical. One way to address this issue is to present visual and tactile texture information simultaneously such that multiple different visual textures are associated with one tactile sensation. This tactile sensation must differ from the visual information only to the extent that the user still perceives the stimuli as consistent. This study examines the consistency required for the simultaneous presentation of visual and tactile sensations for the purpose of reducing the number of necessary real textures in future VR systems. An experiment was conducted using one-dimensional textures (i.e., line gratings), in which participants were asked whether the presented visual texture was finer or coarser than the tactile texture. The results suggest that the relative size of the “permissible range” (the range over which the difference between the visual and tactile sensation is not recognized) is correlated with the spatial period of the real texture.