Abstract:
Haptic technology has made it possible to sense and manipulate virtual digital content
through touch. Haptic feedback plays an important role in HCI as it adds realism to
Virtual Enviroments. Complex devices and complicated wires are the major factors
that limit the use of haptic devices in everyday interaction with computers and digital
devices. Psuedo-haptic feedback presents an alternate to the rich haptic sensation
by generating perceptual haptic illusions through a combination of visual and haptic
modalities without using external haptic devices. In this research, we investigate
the impact of adding audio modality for stiffness perception through mid air action.
Moreover, we investigate the use of such a model in the field of coordination chemistry
to learn about the strengths of metal co-ordination complexes and their ligands.
Pseudo-haptic feedback model was designed based on hand skeleton detection using the
Leapmotion controller. A user study was conducted in which each participant horizontally
stretched a virtual object using mid air action. The magnitude of deformation was
associated with the distance between hands. Maximum deformation was set to 1.95cm.
In order to validate that the proposed pseudo-haptic feedback approach can be used
learning the concept of bond strengths a second experiment was conducted. Users were
asked to identify the randomly appearing co-ordination complexes by stretching them
to a maximum point using mid-air gestures. Our results indicate that no significant
effect of adding audio modality is observed while students found this method helpful
in learning about bond strengths.
