Tutorial: Psychophysical methods in haptic research

Haptics research is by definition a very interdisciplinary field, with scientists and engineers building and evaluating tactile and haptic displays and exploring the domains in which the technology developed can be most optimally used. Central to this process are human user studies in which the displays are evaluated in terms of their capacity to present information to users and the sensitivity of the user to changes in display parameters. A variety of psychophysical procedures are employed for this purpose, most of which have been adapted from research on the visual and auditory systems. The sensory systems involved in processing haptic information present unique challenges due to the active nature of sensory exploration and these need to be taken into account in designing psychophysical experiments with tactile and haptic displays. In this half-day tutorial we will give an overview of psychophysical methods that can be used to analyze haptic perception, including those associated with measuring thresholds, information transfer and multi-dimensional scaling. We will also consider how these methods should be employed in the context of studying novel tactile and haptic illusions.