The Effect of Multisensory Pseudo-Haptic Feedback on Perception of Virtual Weight

Providing realistic haptic feedback of virtual objects is critical for immersive VR experience, and there have been many approaches to simulate haptic properties. Most of them, however, are limited to a narrow modulation range of simulated perception. To overcome this limitation, the current paper examines the effect of multisensory pseudo-haptic feedback that combines control-to-display (C/D) ratio manipulation and electrical muscle stimulation (EMS) on simulated weight perception. In two experiments, we independently manipulated the C/D ratio and EMS status and observed the effects on the absolute and difference thresholds of simulated weight perception. From the absolute thresholds results, we specify the effective range of C/D ratio that can successfully induce weight perception and show that the range can be more than twice widened by multisensory pseudo-haptic feedback. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the sensitivity to weight difference increases as the standard C/D ratio decreases from the difference thresholds results, which provides practical design guidelines for assigning multiple levels of weight to virtual objects. This study contributes to understanding the psychological effects of multisensory pseudo-haptic feedback on simulated weight perception in virtual reality.