VibeRo: Vibrotactile Stiffness Perception Interface for Virtual Reality

Haptic interfaces allow a more realistic experience with Virtual Reality (VR). They are used to manipulate virtual objects. These objects can be rigid and soft. In this letter, we have designed and evaluated a vibrotactile hand-held device (VibeRo) to achieve haptic cues of different soft objects. The proposed method is based on combining the vision-driven displacement produced by the pseudo-haptics effect with the haptic illusion of a limb displacement obtained from force-driven synthesis of vibration of a contact surface. VibeRo features a voice-coil actuator and force-sensitive resistors for generating squeeze forces at fingertips. We present an evaluation of VibeRo's pseudo-haptic and haptic illusion effects to render soft virtual objects. The efficacy of the approach was validated in experiments with human subjects.