Extended rate-hardness: A measure for perceived hardness

Abstract

This paper presents a measure for assessing the perceived hardness of a haptic surface based on associated physical variables. This metric, named extended rate-hardness (ERH), is extended from rate-hardness originally proposed by Lawrence et al. in order to cover a larger class of rendering algorithms and applications. We also performed a psychophysical evaluation using absolute magnitude estimation to quantify the extent to which the ERH can account for perceived hardness. The findings have implications to developing haptic interfaces and rendering algorithms with improved perceptual hardness. © 2010 Springer-Verlag.