Sensory Systems & Virtual Reality Research
We have an ongoing program of research involving the human sensory systems, with a particular interest in the sense of touch (or “haptics”), both on its own and the interaction between it and vision and audition.
Touch psychophysics
A number of projects explore fundamental aspects of the sense of touch, including:
- Isolating and comparing haptic components
- Pitting haptic components against each other
- Exploring how touch might be used to assist a bionic eye implant
- Adding temperature information to exploratory haptics
Active vs passive touch
In active touch the explorer retains control over their movements, while a passive explorer surrenders that control to an outside agency, such as our unique Tactile Display System (click image left for video). A number of projects have been completed:
- Active versus passive for touch in 3 dimensions
- Active versus passive with temperature added
- Active versus passive in two dimensions
- An fMRI comparison of active and passive touch (publication pending)
Multi-sensory exploration
In order to better understand the haptic modality we explore how it performs when it receives stimulation that is either congruent or incongruent with information provided to vision &/or audition.
- We provide haptic information via our Exograsp and visual information on a monitor (see right) to explore the realism of virtual touch
- The horizontal-vertical illusion across the senses
- A comparison of touch and vision in identifying letters (click for a video, abstract)
- A test of dominance/capture when haptic and visual information is incongruent
Further papers on haptic, multimodal and virtual reality topics can be found on our haptic publications page.