A brief taxonomy of tactile illusions and demonstrations that can be done in a hardware store

Abstract

This paper surveys more than twenty types of tactile illusions and discusses several of their aspects. These aspects include the ease with which they can be demonstrated and whether they have clear visual analogs. The paper also shows how to construct equipment made of simple supplies able to deliver well controlled tactile signals in order to conveniently demonstrate four different tactile illusions.

Response of SAI Afferents May Play a Role in the Perception of Velvet Hand Illusion

“…Researchers proposed both continuum models (Srinivasan, 1989;Sripati et al, 2006) and finite element models (Maeno et al, 1998;Gerling and Thomas, 2005;2008;Wu et al, 2006) to determine the stress-strain state inside the skin and tried to correlate a mechanical value (either stress or strain based) generated inside the fingertip at the location of the SAI afferents with the action potential generated by them that was measured in monkeys (Phillips and Johnson, 1981) or in man (Johansson and Flanagan, 2009).…”

“…Recently a set of psychophysical experiments studied the "haptic versions" of these illusions (Scilingo et al, 2008). (Mochiyama et al, 2005) and the fishbone and comb illusions (Hayward, 2008).…”

Vibrotactile Display of Flight Attitude with Combination of Multiple Coding Parameters

“…By adjusting the parameter of DOS and ISI, we can make multiple tactors to be perceived as different vibrating modes as illustrated in Figure 4. The simultaneous vibration is also called tactile funnelling illusion: when two tactors vibrate simultaneously on skin, the perceived vibration of a virtual tactor located between the tactors will be felt [34]. The continuous vibration is also called "vibrotactile apparent movement": When activating two or more tactors sequentially with a certain timing, the stimulation point is perceived as if it is moving continuously from one location to another, although the real stimulating sites are discrete [35].…”

Kinesthetic Cues that Lead the Way

“…Since some illusions are very stable independent of individual variation, we can apply those illusions in practice, such as in designing human interfaces, if we can figure out ways to convert them to subjectively equivalent percepts. Hayward has pointed out that illusions are at the basis of virtually all technological displays (Hayward 2008), mentioning this also includes haptic interfaces.…”