Frequency modulation based vibrotactile feedback for 1-D and 2-D pointing tasks in virtual reality

This study investigated how people achieve pointing tasks using a vibrotactile device. A comparison using visual feedback when doing the same task is presented. Subjects were asked to reach a target as fast and as precise as possible guided by visual information from an LCD screen; and two types of tactile information generated by a specific glove we developed. The first type of tactile information was a constant vibrating stimulation and the second one was a frequency modulation based vibration. For each modality, two experiments were performed. The first one was in 1-D: reaching a target situated on a horizontal left-right line. The second one was in 2-D: reaching a target is in a horizontal plane. The results we obtained showed that tactile based pointing task obey to the classical the Fitts´ law. Furthermore, results showed that frequency modulation based vibrating gave better performance in trajectory length, but not in time of execution.