We investigate the role of contact location information on the perception of local features dur- ing contour following in a virtual environment. An absolute identification experiment is conducted under force-alone and force-plus-contact-location conditions to investigate the effect of the contact location in- formation. The results show that the participants identify the local features significantly better in terms of higher information transfer for the force-plus-contact-location condition, while no significant difference was found for measures of the efficacy of contour following between the two conditions. Further data analyses indicate that the improved identification of local features with contact location information is due to the improved identification of small surface features.

• 박재영(Haptic Interface Research Laboratory, Pudue University) | Jaeyoung Park
• 윌리엄프로판쳐(partment of Mechanical Engineering, University of Utah) | William R. Provancher
• 데이비드존슨(hool of Computing, University of Utah) | David E. Johnson
• 홍탄(Haptic Interface Research Laboratory, Purdue University) | Hong Z. Tan Corresponding author