Analysis of hand contact areas and interaction capabilities during manipulation and exploration

Manual human-computer interfaces for virtual reality are designed to allow an operator interacting with a computer simulation as naturally as possible. Dexterous haptic interfaces are the best suited for this goal. They give intuitive and efficient control on the environment with haptic and tactile feedback. This paper is aimed at helping in the choice of the interaction areas to be taken into account in the design of such interfaces. The literature dealing with hand interactions is first reviewed in order to point out the contact areas involved in exploration and manipulation tasks. Their frequencies of use are then extracted from existing recordings. The results are gathered in an original graphical interaction map allowing for a simple visualization of the way the hand is used, and compared with a map of mechanoreceptors densities. Then an interaction tree, mapping the relative amount of actions made available through the use of a given contact area, is built and correlated with the losses of hand function induced by amputations. A rating of some existing haptic interfaces and guidelines for their design are finally achieved to illustrate a possible use of the developed graphical tools.