Performance Evaluation of Active and Passive Haptic Feedback in Shape Perception

Haptic technology allows producing computergenerated signals that a perceiver experiences through touch. In general, haptic devices can be classified as active and passive. In this paper, we present a performance evaluation of a group of 10 voluntary subjects in a task of shape perception when both active and passive kinesthetic haptic feedback are provided. The results of a series of psychophysical experiments show that active haptics is superior for shape recognition: active haptics enhances the perception of surfaces while passive haptics conveys the sensation of being guided along pathways. In addition, the guidance nature of passive haptics makes the pathway direction easy to recognize. This last observation can be effectively exploited in more challenging tasks such as navigation/mobility assistance.