Perceived Hardness as a Function of Stiffness, Damping, and Contact Transient

Abstract

We investigated the effect of stiffness, damping, and contact transient(amplitude, frequency, decay rate) on perceived hardness. To investigate whether each factor has an effect on perceived hardness, we conducted an experiment 1 to report the hardness magnitude of virtual surfaces that had different values of stiffness, damping, and contact transient. Using the data of experiment 1, we conducted 5-way ANOVA and the result showed that stiffness, damping, amplitude and frequency of contact transient significantly affected perceived hardness; decay rate was not significant.

To verify the effect of decay rate, we conducted an experiment 2 that used various decay rate values. Although we used various values of decay rate, the experiment result showed the same statistical result with the result of experiment 1.

Based on the results of experiment 1 and 2, we excluded decay rate and focused stiffness, damping, amplitude and frequency of contact transient. We collected hardness magnitude data of different virtual surfaces that had different values of stiffness, damping, amplitude, and frequency but had the same value of decay rate. After then, we constructed a psychophysical magnitude function using those data. This fitted function will guide the design of methods to render virtual surfaces specific perceived hardness they want.