The Effects of Tactile Gestalt on Generating Velvet Hand Illusion

PubDate: August 2019

Teams: Nagoya University

Writers: Hiraku Komura; Masahiro Ohka

PDF: The Effects of Tactile Gestalt on Generating Velvet Hand Illusion

Abstract

Smoothness is one of the important factors in controlling texture sensation in tactile VR. In previous research, the authors utilized Velvet Hand Illusion (VHI), which is a tactile illusion phenomena, to generate a smooth texture on a dot-matrix display. Since the dot-matrix display can generate arbitrary figures, we are attempting to evaluate our new hypothesis of the VHI mechanism using this display. In our hypothesis, a cognitive mechanism called Gestalt grouping [3] is related to VHI occurrence. If tactile Gestalt were elucidated, we could understand the tactile sensation mechanism deeply and the various devices would be developed in the VR research field. In this paper, we investigate the relationship between tactile Gestalt and VHI through psychophysical experiments. In these experiments, the appearance intensity of tactile Gestalt is controlled by means of density and length of the lines formed on the dot-matrix display. It is concluded that the law of closure stated in the principle of Prägnanz is an essential condition related to tactile Gestalt to generate VHI.