Vibrotactile Feedback Rendering of Patterned Textures Using a Waveform Segment Table Method

Vibrotactile feedback is a common form of rendered haptic feedback used for simulating stylus-texture interaction. Most state-of-the-art stylus-texture interaction vibrotactile feedback synthesizing methods are oriented toward generating signal with resemblance in spectrum in frequency domain. In this paper we set our foot backward and explore more about record-and-playback method for a subset of textures: those that have obvious spatial pattern, which constitutes a significant proportion of man-made textures we interact with in daily life. We propose a method that explicitly renders the periodic vibrotactile feedback for patterned textures. The method uses Dynamic Time Warping to select the most representative signal segment from a long continuous signal captured under a certain interaction condition, and constructs a waveform segment table to store representative signal segments under different conditions. Results of similarity-comparison user study show that subjects gave generally higher similarity scores to our proposed method than to a spectrum-oriented method. The results shed light on the importance of conserving the pattern in the haptic feedback rendering for patterned textures.