Target Acquisition with Force Feedback: The Effect of Different Forces on the User's Performance

Besides realistic haptic rendering of objects, haptic feedback can also be used to provide an abstract feedback channel. This can either be realised by a tactile or a force feedback stimulus. When using forces, care has to be taken that the user’s performance is not influenced in a negative way. However, as it is not obvious to determine a suitable force, and currently not many guidelines exist. Therefore, in this paper we investigate the influence on some important parameters that define a force (shape, duration and amplitude). In order to compare different forces, we propose to use the definite integral (Force Integral, FI) which combines the considered parameters. From the conducted experiment we learn that the FI can be used (within bounds) to make an estimation of the result of the force. Besides this, we also found that above a given FI value, the user’s performance degrades significantly.