Psychophysical calibration of whole-body vibration in the display of impact events in auditory and haptic virtual environments

Multimodal perception in an auditory and haptic virtual environment was psychophysically investigated in order to refine simulation of virtual events for which whole-body vibration could be reproduced in coordination with highly realistic virtual acoustical reproduction. The purpose of the study reported here was to determine the range of optimum intermodal delay values for coordinated auditory and haptic reproduction of brief impact events. Indirect psychophysical methods were used to find the intermodal delay that would be most likely to generate the response of perceived synchrony between acoustic and structural vibration components of those events. A recording of a representative impact sound was processed to create virtual events with varying amounts of intermodal delay between bimodally reproduced components. Obtained psychophysical calibration results are limited to whole-body haptic stimulation, and should not be expected to apply to local haptic stimulation, such as a vibratory stimulus presented to a finger tip.