We present a new interaction technique to simulate textures in desktop applications without a haptic interface. The main idea of pseudo-haptic textures consists in modifying the motion of the cursor displayed on the computer screen, during the manipulation of the input device by the user. Assuming that the image displayed on the screen corresponds to a top-view of the texture, the Control/Display ratio for the mouse is then adjusted as a function of the simulated “height” of the terrain over which the mouse cursor is travelling (Control/Display ratio : the speed of hand movement (Control) to speed of cursor movement (Display) gives a ratio called the Control-to-Display or C/D ratio).
A deceleration of the cursor indicates a positive slope of the texture and conversely an acceleration of the cursor indicates a negative slope of the texture.

Figure 1 illustrates the technique and displays the modification of the C/D ratio during the simulation of a circular bump. The bump is displayed on the screen in top-view, i.e. as a disk. When climbing the bump, the speed of the cursor decreases. Once the center of the bump is reached, the speed of the cursor increases. The simulation of a hole is achieved conversely.

The variations of the speed of the cursor are used here to transpose the effect of lateral forces when passing over the texture. During the exploration of textures, the lateral forces were shown to dominate other perceptual cues, in particular vertical motions [Robles-De-La-Torre and Hayward, 2001]. Thus we assume that this technique is likely to make the user feel that his/her input device actually passes over the simulated texture.

Experimental evaluations showed that participants could successfully identify macroscopic textures such as bumps and holes, by simply using the variations of the motion of the cursor. Furthermore, the participants were able to draw the different profiles of bumps and holes which were simulated, correctly. These results suggest that our technique enabled the participants to successfully conjure a mental image of the topography of the macroscopic textures. Applications for this technique are: the feeling of images (pictures, drawings) or GUI components (windows’ edges, buttons), the improvement of navigation, or the visualization of scientific data.

• A. Lécuyer, J.M. Burkhardt, L. Etienne, "Feeling Bumps and Holes without a Haptic Interface: the Perception of Pseudo-Haptic Textures", ACM Conference in Human Factors in Computing Systems (ACM SIGCHI'04), April 24-29, Vienna, Austria, 2004 - pdf version

> back to Anatole Lécuyer's homepage