Discrimination of Real and Virtual High-Definition Textured Surfaces

Research on haptic texture perception requires the availability of textured surfaces with high precision and fine resolution. Given the exquisite sensitivity of the human fingers to minute differences in surface details, the textured surfaces need to be precisely defined to a micron level. Real and virtual high-definition textured surfaces were used in the present study of amplitude discrimination of sinusoidal gratings. Similar thresholds were obtained despite the difference in contact modes (fingertip on real textures and a point on virtual textures). The results support the use of high position-resolution force-feedback devices in studying texture perception, especially in situations where the fabrication of real textures is either beyond the resolution of the fabrication process or simply too expensive and time-consuming.