Manipulating Stiffness Perception of Compliant Objects While Pinching in Virtual Reality
Weiss, Yannick and Villa, Steeven and Ziarko, Moritz and Müller, Florian
Abstract: Providing users with realistic sensations of object stiffness in virtual environments remains challenging due to the intricacies of our haptic sense. We investigate the use of a visuo-haptic illusion to alter the perceived stiffness of hand-held objects in virtual reality. We manipulate the Control-to-Display ratio of the index finger and thumb movements during pinching to make virtual objects feel softer or harder. We evaluated this approach on a variety of haptic representations and visualizations we selected through a pre-study survey (N=24). Results of our user study (N=20) demonstrate that this method effectively and reliably modifies stiffness perception, bridging gaps of 50% in physical stiffness without adversely affecting the visuo-haptic experience. Our findings offer insights into how different visual and haptic presentations impact stiffness perception, contributing to more effective and adaptable future haptic feedback systems.
@inproceedings{weissManipulatingStiffnessPerception2025,title={Manipulating {{Stiffness Perception}} of {{Compliant Objects While Pinching}} in {{Virtual Reality}}},booktitle={Proceedings of the 2025 31st {{ACM Symposium}} on {{Virtual Reality Software}} and {{Technology}}},author={Weiss, Yannick and Villa, Steeven and Ziarko, Moritz and M{\"u}ller, Florian},year={2025},month=dec,series={{{VRST}} '25},pages={1--11},publisher={Association for Computing Machinery},address={New York, NY, USA},doi={10.1145/3756884.3765988},urldate={2025-12-10},isbn={979-8-4007-2118-2},}
