Can A Vibrotactile Stimulation On Fingertips Make An Illusion Of Elbow Joint Movement?

Traditionally vibrotactile feedback delivered by haptic interfaces is used to provide additional support for visual interaction via prehensile object manipulation using fingers. Nevertheless, haptic stimuli can be also applied for non-prehensile interaction that involves movements of the elbow joint. In this paper, we have designed a table-top haptic device that provides vibrotactile stimulation to the user’s fingertips. This stimulation creates a kinesthetic illusion of the user’s forearm pivot movement with respect to the elbow joint. The vibrotactile stimulation is amplified by the pseudo-haptic effect delivered through a head-mounted display (HMD). The efficacy of the approach was validated in experiments with human subjects. The results show that the combination of pseudo-haptic and haptic illusion effects can be used to render various soft and rigid virtual objects.