Mind the bump: Effect of geometrical descriptors on the perception of curved surfaces with a novel tactile mouse

Abstract

In this work we present a new haptic assistive device, the TActile MOuse 3 (TAMO3), designed to support construction of mental maps in absence of vision. Since curvature is a sufficient information in recognition and classification of shapes [11] we evaluate TAMO3 in a curvature discrimination task: curves were rendered, on one finger only, through geometrical descriptors such as elevation and inclination, in three degrees of freedom. We assessed how performance and mental workload were influenced by such descriptors. Inclination cues were confirmed to be associated with higher precision and higher mental demand, with no increase in frustration. Therefore, as delivered by our device, inclination seems to be an effective haptic cue to mentally construct curved virtual shapes. The joint analysis of aspects from psychophysics and workload confirms to be essential when designing assistive haptic devices since it provides different and complementary results.