Visuo-Tactile Feedback with Hand Outline Styles for Modulating Affective Roughness Perception

2025-08-19

AI Summary

This study investigates how visuo-haptic cross-modal interactions modulate affective roughness perception in virtual reality (VR). We propose a novel multisensory rendering method that overlays parametrically controllable hand-contour cues—varying in shape, motion, and color—onto the user’s virtual hand while concurrently delivering fingertip vibrotactile stimulation. Results show that sharp contours significantly enhance perceived roughness and physiological arousal while reducing emotional valence; red color coding further diminishes positive affect. Critically, these visual cues exert robust affective modulation even under low-intensity tactile stimulation. This work provides the first empirical evidence that hand-contour visualization constitutes an independent and effective cross-modal affective regulation channel. It extends the affective modulation range of mid-intensity haptic perception and establishes a scalable, lightweight multisensory fusion paradigm for affective VR interaction design.

Technology Category

• Computer Vision: Multi-modal Vision
• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: Affective Computing
• Intelligent Robots: Multimodal Perception & Sensor Fusion

Application Category

• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Practical large-scale studies of user experience
• Web Mining and Content Analysis: Mining multimedia, multimodal, multilingual, cross-lingual Web data
• Search and Retrieval-Augmented AI: Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) and multi-modal RAG

Abstract

We propose a visuo-tactile feedback method that combines virtual hand visualization and fingertip vibrations to modulate affective roughness perception in VR. While prior work has focused on object-based textures and vibrotactile feedback, the role of visual feedback on virtual hands remains underexplored. Our approach introduces affective visual cues including line shape, motion, and color applied to hand outlines, and examines their influence on both affective responses (arousal, valence) and perceived roughness. Results show that sharp contours enhanced perceived roughness, increased arousal, and reduced valence, intensifying the emotional impact of haptic feedback. In contrast, color affected valence only, with red consistently lowering emotional positivity. These effects were especially noticeable at lower haptic intensities, where visual cues extended affective modulation into mid-level perceptual ranges. Overall, the findings highlight how integrating expressive visual cues with tactile feedback can enrich affective rendering and offer flexible emotional tuning in immersive VR interactions.

Problem

• Modulating affective roughness perception in VR
• Exploring visual feedback's role on virtual hands
• Integrating visual cues with tactile feedback

Innovation

• Combines virtual hand visualization with fingertip vibrations
• Introduces affective visual cues on hand outlines
• Extends affective modulation into mid-level perceptual ranges