Effects of Physical Hardness on the Perception of Rendered Stiffness in an Encountered-Type Haptic Display.

Rendering stable hard surfaces is an important problem in haptics; current haptic devices cannot render hard objects and free space together. In our previous work, we addressed these limitations using an encountered-type haptic display system, which showed significant improvements compared to traditional rendering methods. In our approach, we attach a plate with the desired hardness to the kinesthetic device's end-effector, which the user interacts with using an untethered stylus. This method allows us to directly change the hardness of the end-effector based on the rendered object. In this paper, we evaluate how changing the hardness of the end-effector can mask the device's stiffness and affect the user's perception of the interaction. Our human subject experiment results indicate that when the end-effector is made of a hard material, it is difficult for users to perceive the stiffness change rendered by the device. On the other hand, this stiffness change is easily distinguished when the end-effector is made of a soft material. These results show promise for our combined hardness-stiffness display in avoiding the limitations of haptic devices when rendering hard surfaces.