Modelling of Haptic Vibration Textures with Infinite-Impulse-Response Filters

Vibration feedback models are known to be effective to convey tactile characteristics in virtual environments and they can be rendered with existing haptic devices. In this paper we develop a novel texture model based on a spatial distribution of infinite-impulse-response filters which operate in the time domain. We match the impulse response of the filters to measured acceleration profiles obtained from scanning of real-world objects. We report results on surfaces with varying roughness characteristics including surfaces with stochastic variations and surfaces with regular features. Our novel use of infinite-impulse-response filters allows us to represent multiple frequencies of the response, and to unify the haptic texture model to arbitrary surfaces unlike the conventional rendering method for patterned textures based on a decaying sinusoid. We employ an existing hand-held mobile scanning set-up with a visually-tracked probe, which provides acceleration and force profiles. Our simple capturing devices also removes any need for a robotic manipulator.