Investigating the Influence of Stiffness on Decision Making for Haptic Interface Evaluation Development

Abstract

<p align="justify">Sensation input very important information for human life. In order to explore the mechanism of perception caused by compliance (hardness or softness), it is necessary to collect and examine the phenomena that occur along the way, including physical reactions. The goal of our study is to investigate whether social perception and behavior are influenced by the sensation of a human finger using the haptic interface device. In this paper as the pretest of a haptic interface device, psychological experiments whether touching softball or hardball is influence on social perception and behavior of people are duplicated. STUDY1 using only the index finger showed that information of a reaction force acted on a human finger has no influence on others impression and has influence on social behavior.  In STUDY2 with grasping the ball while collecting the surface electromyogram signals of the skin using sEMG sensors, the grasping ball's stiffness had influence on others impression and social behavior. This knowledge could be expected as a fundamental technology that improves the ease of use of a haptic interface and enables remote exchange of sensory information. </p>