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Updated: Aug 24, 2026

Applying Incongruent Visual-Tactile Stimuli during Object Transfer with Vibro-Tactile Feedback
Published on: May 23, 2019
Cross-modal visual and vibrotactile tracking
Jan B F van Erp1, Marc H Verschoor
1TNO Human Factors, PO Box 23, Soesterberg, 3769 ZG, The Netherlands. vanerp@tm.tno.nl
Abstract:
The present study investigates tracking performance with tactile and/or visual presentation of target and cursor. The tactile display consisted of vibrators in a horizontal linear array on the torso, the visual display consisted of dots projected on a horizontal plane surrounding the observer. Both displays presented qualitatively identical information: direction in a horizontal plane. Participants performed two different tracking tasks with target and cursor presented to the same modality (either visual or tactile) or to different modalities (a visual target and a tactile cursor or vice versa). The errors in both cross-modal settings were well predicted by the uni-modal errors. This indicates that no additional costs are involved in cross-modal visual-vibrotactile tracking. Closer inspection of the data reveals that the tactile modality is less suited for processing external disturbances. These results give directions on how to allocate information to the visual and tactile modalities in a multi-modal tracking interface, such as those applied in military cockpits.
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