Visual-haptic perception of compliant objects in artificially generated environments

Perception of compliant objects through a human system interface with visual-haptic feedback was investigated. Participants had to explore virtual cubes at different compliances by squeezing them with their fingers and observing them visually and haptically. The cubes were rendered by admittance control. Perception of compliance was analyzed using an adaptive staircase method. Results showed that visual-haptic perception of compliant environments is less accurate than perception of position and force stimuli. Furthermore, due to the important role of the visual feedback cross-modal comparisons are more difficult than bimodal comparisons.