Effects of active or passive touch on perception precision of edge direction using tactile mouse exhibiting convex dot-patterns on the palm

We developed a tactile mouse that presents convex dot-patterns on a human palm to obtain the design parameters of haptic devices for virtual reality (VR). In a tactile VR study, we focused on the following issue, “which tactile perception is superior, active or passive touch?”, because it is related to the design of haptic devices that can present detailed information in tactile VR. This study evaluates the differences in perception precision between active and passive touch to clarify the best presentation method in VR through a series of psychophysical experiments using a tactile mouse. Since the presentation precision of virtual figures depends on the sharpness of the edges generated by dot-patterns, our experiment subjects evaluate the slope of the oblique edges. In a psychophysical experiment, two oblique edges of dot-patterns are presented consecutively and subjects compare them to determine which is larger. We evaluate the perception precision using the difference threshold of the edge angles calculated by the simplified constant stimuli method. Experimental results show that the perception precision at low speed (45 and 90 mm/s) of edge movement is better than at high speed (130 and 170 mm/s) and also that there is no significant difference between active and passive touching.