A heuristic to capture multi-directional lateral tactile perception

• Published in: Theoretical issues in ergonomics science Vol. 13; no. 4; pp. 493 - 507
• Main Authors: Placencia, Greg, Rahimi, Mansour, Khoshnevis, Behrokh
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Abingdon Taylor & Francis Group 01.07.2012; Taylor & Francis Ltd
• Subjects: Distortion; Fingers; Haptics; Heuristic; just noticeable difference; Mathematical analysis; multi-directional tactile perception; percept vector; Perception; response magnitude; Systems design; Tactile; Tactile transducers
• ISSN: 1463-922X; 1464-536X
• DOI: 10.1080/1463922X.2010.549248

Multi-directional tactile perception adds significant complexity when interpreting haptic experimental data. In perceiving tactile stimulus direction, we often observe a lack of one-to-one stimulus-response compatibility, mostly due to confounding sensations that reinforce and/or distort a primary stimulus. This study presents the development of a metric to capture multi-directional lateral tactile perception on a finger pad. Sixty-two subjects rated the direction and magnitude of lateral motion from a single probe moving in one of the eight possible directions. A heuristic based on a vector matrix was developed to capture and integrate the relative contribution of each subject's rated directional perception in x-y coordinates. This article explains the theoretical underpinnings and the justifications for this heuristic and highlights the usefulness of this approach for future haptic system designs.