Pseudo-Haptic Feedback Through Mid-Air Action For Learning of Chemical Bond Strengths

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.