Should haptic texture vibrations respond to user force and speed?

Dragging a tool across a textured surface produces vibrations that convey important perceptual information about the interaction and the underlying qualities of the surface. These vibrations depend on the motions of the tool and respond to both normal force and tangential speed. This paper explores various methods of simulating haptic texture interactions by rendering tool vibrations that are based on recorded data. We designed and ran a human-subject study (N=15) to analyze the importance of creating virtual texture vibrations that respond to user force and speed. Our analysis of data from fifteen textures showed that removing speed responsiveness did cause a statistically significant decrease in perceived realism, but removing force responsiveness did not. This result indicates that virtual textures aiming to simulate real surfaces should vary the rendered vibrations with user speed but may not need to vary them with user force.