Regular Article

Combination of oriented-plane curvature reproduction and squeeze film effect-based texture reproduction to simulate curved and textured surface

¹ Department of Instrumental and Electrical Engineering, Xiamen University, Xiamen 361005, PR China
² Fujian Branch of China United Network Communication Co., Ltd., Fuzhou 350001, PR China
³ Shenzhen Research Institute of Xiamen University, Shenzhen 518000, PR China

^* e-mail: tao.zeng@xmu.edu.cn

Received: 14 October 2021
Accepted: 7 March 2021

Abstract

The finger skin contains a variety of receptors, which provide multiple tactile sensing channels. When a finger touches the surface of an object, people can simultaneously perceive curvature, texture, softness, temperature, and so on. However, in most of research activities, the designed haptic feedback devices can only focus on a certain channel. In this paper, the rendering of curved and periodic textured surfaces involving two channels, i.e., curvature and texture, was studied. Two psychophysical experiments were conducted to investigate whether the coupling of kinesthetic feedback of curvature and tactile feedback of texture could reproduce curved and textured surfaces with high fidelity. The results showed a deviation of the point of subjective equality values in terms of curvature and roughness, indicating that the curvature rendering and texture rendering have an impact on each other. Therefore, it is necessary to correct the bias when making virtual rendering. The influence of curvature on texture rendering is reduced by recalculating and adjusting the spatial period of the synthesized texture in real-time; the influence of texture on curvature rendering is eliminate by compensating the force difference between touch on physical strip and artificial stimulus.