Tactile Design: Translating User Expectations into Vibration for Plausible Virtual Environments

The aim of this paper is to demonstrate a novel design strategy for whole-body vibration based on user expectations which facilitates product design and the creation of plausible virtual environments. In both applications vibration parameters need to be derived from user expectations. Users can quantify their tactile expectations by rating a compact set of familiar sensory perceptual attributes (e.g. "tingling", "weak") without prior training. These ratings could be translated into parameters of vibration eliciting the expected perceptual attributes with the help of the relationship uncovered in a previous study. But are such attributes useful for the synthesis of whole-body vibration? To answer this question audio-visual-tactile vehicle scenes were recorded and rated for their elicited perceptual attributes. Subsequently scenes with vibration synthesized from these ratings were created. In a second experiment recorded scenes and synthesized scenes were rated for their perceived plausibility. Results show that plausibility ratings are extremely similar between recorded and synthesized vibration despite clear temporal spectral differences. These findings suggest that the plausibility illusion can be produced by presenting vibration which elicit the expected perceptual attributes. Thus, tactile perceptual attributes are sufficient to quantify user expectations from which plausible vibration can be systematically designed.