IEEE Transactions on Haptics最新文献

{"title":"Comparing Haptic Cues for Operator Guidance Towards a Target Input with a One-Dimensional Active Lever.","authors":"Corentin Conan, Ahmed Farooq, Ilja Frissen, Jeremy R Cooperstock","doi":"10.1109/TOH.2026.3736706","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/TOH.2026.3736706","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>As automation capabilities advance, human-machine collaboration increasingly involves systems providing guidance to operators during control tasks. Such guidance combines the precision of automated systems with human oversight, keeping operators in the control loop. In safety-critical domains such as aviation, they must follow prescribed inputs while monitoring their environment. In these cases, providing guidance through the visual channel may interfere with monitoring, potentially compromising operational safety, making alternative modalities preferable. This makes haptic feedback a promising candidate, raising the question of which cues most effectively prompt accurate operator input. We study this problem in its simplest form: an operator using a one-dimensional control-similar to the thrust levers used in commercial aircraft. Guidance can be conveyed through different cues, including vibrations, detents, nudges, and continuous force feedback. We compare these cues in a controlled lever task with 20 participants, both with and without visual guidance. When visual guidance is available, directional detents with target-dependent spacing improve accuracy, whereas more salient cues degrade performance. Without visual guidance, directional vibrations outperform proportional continuous linear force feedback commonly used in haptic shared control systems, and yield target acquisition times close to those achieved with visual guidance. Within the cue implementations and experimental conditions we evaluated, our results highlight that the salience of transitions between on- and off-target states is more critical than the amount of target-related information provided simultaneously, such as target acquisition, direction, and distance. They further suggest that cues effective for complementing visual guidance are those that do not compete with the user for control of the task, for example by relying on strong guiding forces, whereas more salient cues are better suited to replace it; directional vibrations provide a balance between these roles. These findings suggest that the directional feedback implemented and evaluated in this study can effectively guide operators toward a target input using a one-dimensional control. They motivate further evaluation in application-specific contexts, including aviation.</p>","PeriodicalId":13215,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Transactions on Haptics","volume":"PP ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2026-10-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149136260","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Active Learning of Fractional-Order Viscoelastic Model Parameters for Realistic Haptic Rendering.","authors":"Harun Tolasa, Gorkem Gemalmaz, Volkan Patoglu","doi":"10.1109/TOH.2026.3740816","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/TOH.2026.3740816","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Effective medical simulators require realistic haptic rendering of biological tissues exhibiting viscoelastic properties, such as creep and stress relaxation. Fractional-order models provide an effective means of describing intrinsically time-dependent viscoelastic dynamics with few parameters, as they naturally capture memory effects. However, due to the unintuitive, frequency-dependent coupling between the fractional-order element and other parameters, determining appropriate parameter values for fractional-order models that yield high perceived realism remains a significant challenge. In this study, we propose a systematic means of determining the parameters of fractional-order viscoelastic models that optimizes the perceived realism of haptic rendering across general populations. First, we demonstrate that the parameters of fractional-order models can be effectively optimized through active learning, using qualitative feedback-based human-in-the-loop (HiL) optimization, ensuring consistently high realism ratings for each individual. Second, we propose a rigorous method to combine HiL optimization results into an aggregate perceptual map trained on the entire dataset, and demonstrate how to select population-level optimal parameters from this representation that are broadly perceived as realistic across general populations. Finally, we provide evidence of the effectiveness of the generalized fractional-order viscoelastic model parameters for three viscoelastic materials by characterizing their perceived realism through human-subject experiments. Overall, generalized fractional-order viscoelastic models established through the proposed HiL optimization and aggregation approach possess the potential to significantly improve the sim-to-real transition performance of medical training simulators.</p>","PeriodicalId":13215,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Transactions on Haptics","volume":"PP ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2026-10-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149109083","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Transnasal Teleoperation Via Haptic Force Reconstruction and Environment Stiffness-Guided Adaptive Impedance Control.","authors":"Hao Yang, Wei Dai, Chuang Cheng, Rong Hu, Wei Quan, Ziwei Fu, Huimin Lu","doi":"10.1109/TOH.2026.3740279","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/TOH.2026.3740279","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Transnasal puncture and endonasal interventions are performed in narrow passages, where fragile mucosa is vulnerable to accidental wall contact, particularly from transient force peaks. We propose a switching teleoperation and force-feedback framework for transnasal manipulation using a Sigma.7 master and a Franka Research 3 (FR3) slave equipped with forceps. The system runs in unilateral mode during free motion and switches to bilateral control upon contact, improving maneuverability while maintaining realistic contact feedback. On the slave side, contact force is inferred from FR3 joint-torque sensing and model-based dynamics. Environmental stiffness is estimated online via recursive least squares, quantized into stiffness levels, and used to drive adaptive impedance shaping on the slave to suppress force peaks. For haptic rendering, the master emulates the slave impedance and reconstructs contact force from contact-induced slave The proposed method is evaluated through three distinct laboratory-based experiments to explore its potential for safer operation in constrained environments. In Experiment I, the method achieves 90% identification accuracy on materials with tissue-like materials. In experiments II and III, the proposed method achieved lower peak contact forces (about 5 N), lower cumulative strong interaction metrics (below 10 when threshold is 3 N), and higher success rates (88.3%) in narrow channel passage tasks compared to the three baseline methods.</p>","PeriodicalId":13215,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Transactions on Haptics","volume":"PP ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2026-10-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149109104","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Psychophysical Characterization of Osseoperception Across Upper-Limb Bony Landmarks.","authors":"Cristian Felipe Blanco-Diaz, Leonardo Cappello, Strahinja Dosen","doi":"10.1109/TOH.2026.3740461","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/TOH.2026.3740461","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Somatosensory feedback is essential for fine motor control, yet it remains a challenge to restore it in assistive technologies such as prostheses or exoskeletons. This study investigates osseoperception-the perception of vibrotactile and auditory sensations through bone conduction- a feedback approach that has unique advantages but is rarely considered in literature. We have systematically assessed the psychometric properties of this method across four anatomical sites: the pisiform bone (PB) at the wrist, the olecranon (OL) at the elbow, the clavicle (CL) at the shoulder, and the mastoid process (MP) at the head. Twelve healthy participants underwent four psychophysical experiments to assess sensation discrimination, perception thresholds (PTs), and just-noticeable differences (JNDs) for amplitude and frequency. All tests have been performed at three frequencies (low, medium and high), except for JND, which was determined at two frequencies (low and high). Vibrotactile sensations predominated at low frequencies, whereas auditory sensations emerged at higher frequencies. PB and OL exhibited similar psychometric responses, mostly eliciting vibrations and mixed vibro-auditory sensations, while CL showed responses more comparable to MP, including a higher probability of occurrence of mixed and auditory sensations. PT showed significant differences, whereas JND did not differ significantly across the three upper limb landmarks (PB, OL and CL). Overall, these findings demonstrate that multiple upper-limb bony landmarks can reliably evoke osseoperceptive sensations, supporting their potential use as a single-channel multimodal feedback interface in assistive technologies, both wearable and implantable. The present study shows that there is flexibility in the placement of the bone transducer, which can be chosen based on the requirements of a specific application (e.g., OL for transradial amputation, and CL for transhumeral amputations).</p>","PeriodicalId":13215,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Transactions on Haptics","volume":"PP ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2026-10-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149109053","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Thermal Perception and Energy Efficiency Using Heat Spatial Integration.","authors":"Yuko Kurihara, Yoshihito Okumura, Yoshihiro Tanaka","doi":"10.1109/TOH.2026.3735443","DOIUrl":"10.1109/TOH.2026.3735443","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Thermal displays hold promise for supporting thermal comfort in products involving steady contact such as smart office chairs, electric vehicle seats, and heated toilet seats. However, conventional thermal conduction methods have practical limitations due to their large device size and high energy consumption. This study leveraged a spatial integration effect similar to thermal referral or heat phantom sensation, hereafter referred to as the heat spatial integration illusion (h-SI), which induces the perception of warmth between discrete stimulus points, demonstrating its potential for achieving superior perceptual characteristics and energy efficiency. Psychophysical experiments conducted at near-human body temperature ($37^circ text{C}$) on the arm revealed that the warmth perceived by h-SI is controlled by the temperature of the central stimulus and no significant effect of stimulus distance was detected between 60 mm and 100 mm under the tested conditions. Furthermore, the h-SI design demonstrated a model-based estimate of power reduction of 6%- 13% under steady-state conditions across central stimuli of 27, 30, and $33^circ text{C}$, compared to presenting the same temperature with a single element. These findings provide crucial foundational guidelines for realizing energy-efficient thermal displays.</p>","PeriodicalId":13215,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Transactions on Haptics","volume":"PP ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2026-09-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149060588","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Fingertip Pressure Feedback Increases the Perceived Length of a Handheld Object.","authors":"Jeongwoo Kim, Hyunyong Park, Chaeyong Park, Seungmoon Choi","doi":"10.1109/TOH.2026.3734692","DOIUrl":"10.1109/TOH.2026.3734692","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In haptics, supporting dynamic touch, the perception of object properties such as length and shape through wielding, remains a significant challenge, often requiring complex and bulky devices. This paper investigates whether the perceived length of a wielded physical object can be augmented using only dynamic cutaneous (pressure) feedback to the fingertips, motivated by the recent advancement of haptic gloves. We designed pressure feedback profiles inspired by the biomechanical changes in finger pressure that naturally occur during wielding. These profiles deliver sequential pressure stimuli to the fingertips, synchronized with the object's rotational angle during wielding. A perceptual experiment demonstrated that the fingertip pressure feedback significantly increased the perceived length of an elongated object by 6.1% on average. This effect was equivalent to an increase of 13.8% in the physical moment of inertia of the object. This finding suggests that cutaneous feedback can effectively modulate the perceptual properties of handheld objects mediated through dynamic touch, expanding the application areas of hand-worn haptic devices.</p>","PeriodicalId":13215,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Transactions on Haptics","volume":"PP ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2026-09-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"149038400","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Deep Tactile Learning for Tumor Detection and Depth Classification in Robot-Assisted Surgery.","authors":"A Talasaz","doi":"10.1109/TOH.2026.3732967","DOIUrl":"10.1109/TOH.2026.3732967","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This work presents a phantom-based proof-of-concept learning framework for robot-assisted palpation to detect tissue abnormalities and classify abnormality depth. A probe equipped with a rigidly mounted tactile sensor acquires spatially aligned pressure and indentation-depth maps during semi-autonomous, force-regulated exploration. A gated multi-task convolutional neural network (CNN) is developed to jointly perform tumor detection and tumor-positive depth classification using pressure-specific, indentation-specific, and fused pressure-indentation expert representations. Task-specific gates learn independent expert weightings for the two prediction tasks, while a masked loss restricts depth supervision to tumor-positive samples with valid depth labels. The framework learns spatial representations directly from paired pressure and indentation-depth maps without requiring an explicitly computed stiffness map as a primary model input. The method is evaluated using operator-independent and uneven-surface phantom test data. On the combined independent test set, the proposed model achieved a tumor-detection accuracy of 95.2%, an ROC-AUC of 0.934, an F1-score of 0.889, and a specificity of 98.0%. For tumor-positive depth classification, it achieved an accuracy of 85.7%, a mean absolute error of 0.143, and a quadratic weighted kappa of 0.811. Comparisons with pressure-only, indentation-only, stiffness-based, and multimodal baseline models indicate that models combining pressure and indentation-depth information produced the strongest depth-classification results. The proposed task-specific multi-head formulation also yielded the highest tumor-detection accuracy and F1-score point estimates while matching the strongest depth results.</p>","PeriodicalId":13215,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Transactions on Haptics","volume":"PP ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2026-09-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148929604","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"How Haptics Affects Emotions in Robotic Dancing Performance.","authors":"Ivan Semenzi, Alberto Villani, Tommaso Lisini Baldi, Domenico Prattichizzo","doi":"10.1109/TOH.2026.3731722","DOIUrl":"10.1109/TOH.2026.3731722","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Dance and movement-based artistic practices are a powerful nonverbal channel for emotional communication. The integration of robotic systems into these expressive contexts enables novel forms of performative art, while simultaneously raising concerns regarding the fidelity and perceptual accuracy of conveyed emotional information, particularly when affective content is mediated through non-humanoid embodiments. This study addresses a key limitation of robotic dance previously identified: although emotional valence and stylistic coherence were largely preserved, the resulting robotic performances exhibited diminished clarity in the perception of emotional arousal. To overcome this limitation, we investigate the role of haptic feedback as an additional expressive modality to support emotional communication in robotic dance. Visual performances by both human and robotic dancers are augmented with thermal and vibrotactile cues designed in accordance with established associations between haptic stimuli and emotional dimensions. A user study was conducted to assess how this multimodal augmentation influences the perception of emotional arousal. Results demonstrate that the inclusion of thermal or vibro-thermal haptic stimuli significantly enhances the interpretability of emotional content conveyed by a dancing robot. In particular, haptic augmentation of the audience experience improves the distinguishability of emotion intensity without altering the transmission of hedonic tone.</p>","PeriodicalId":13215,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Transactions on Haptics","volume":"PP ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2026-09-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148911536","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Using Vibrotactile Patterns for Conveying Orchestral Conducting Gestures to Blind and Visually Impaired Musicians.","authors":"Pietro Buccellato, Leonardo Severi, Matteo Sacchetto, Emilie Ophelie Vieux, Cristina Rottondi","doi":"10.1109/TOH.2026.3731407","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/TOH.2026.3731407","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Orchestral conducting relies predominantly on visual gestures to convey timing, dynamics, articulation, cueing, and expressive intent, creating a significant accessibility barrier for Blind and Visually Impaired (BVI) musicians. This work investigates whether structured vibrotactile patterns, commonly referred to as tactons, can provide a non-visual channel for representing selected orchestral conducting cues, focusing on the design and perceptual evaluation of tactile encodings for conducting-related information. To this aim, a wearable sleeve equipped with vibrating motors in a simple layout was leveraged to implement established vibrotactile display principles such as spatially distributed stimulation, temporal patterning, and coarse intensity modulation. Preliminary experiments involving both sighted and BVI participants were conducted to assess stimulus localization, intensity discrimination, and the perception of combined vibrotactile features. The outcomes of these experiments informed the design of a set of tactons representing conducting intentions such as beat, entrance, cut-off, pointing, crescendo, and diminuendo. The resulting tacton set was subsequently evaluated with BVI participants through recognition tasks designed to assess its interpretability and effectiveness. Results demonstrate that the BVI cohort was able to reliably identify six tactons after limited training, achieving an average recognition accuracy of 77%, with individual accuracies ranging from approximately 60% to nearly 100%.</p>","PeriodicalId":13215,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Transactions on Haptics","volume":"PP ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2026-09-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148905869","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Design and Characterization of a Gel-Based Thermal Contact Sensor for Approximating Human Finger Heat Transfer.","authors":"Naoki Kameyama, Takayuki Kameoka, Hsin-Ni Ho","doi":"10.1109/TOH.2026.3730437","DOIUrl":"10.1109/TOH.2026.3730437","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Thermal responses at the skin-material interface play an important role in human touch perception and material recognition. This study presents the design and characterization of a gel-based thermal contact sensor developed to approximate the transient heat-transfer responses of the human finger during material contact. The sensor incorporates a compliant, finger sized gel interface and an integrated heating system that reproduces an initial skin-like temperature condition at contact onset. The design is motivated by limitations of conventional rigid contact thermal sensors, including unstable contact conditions and discrepancies from human finger responses. Compared with a previous glass-based design, the proposed sensor improves measurement stability and achieves closer correspondence to human finger thermal responses, particularly for materials with mid-range thermal effusivity. However, the sensor exhibits faster and larger temperature changes than the human finger for high effusivity materials, highlighting the challenges of reproducing human-like interfacial heat transfer. We discuss possible con tributing factors, including thermal contact resistance, surface conformity, and the absence of fingerprint-like microstructure in the gel interface. The proposed system is positioned as a biomimetic thermal sensing platform for capturing human-like thermal contact responses under controlled conditions, with potential future applications in haptic interface evaluation, robotic material sensing, and data-driven material recognition systems.</p>","PeriodicalId":13215,"journal":{"name":"IEEE Transactions on Haptics","volume":"PP ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2026-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148880108","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}