Design and evaluation of haptic effects for use in a computer desktop for the physically disabled

Abstract

The human-computer interface remains a mostly visual environment with little or no haptic interaction. While haptics is finding inroads in specialized areas such as surgery, gaming, and robotics, there has been little work to bring haptics to the computer desktop which is largely dominated today by the GUI/mouse relationship. The mouse as an input device, however poses many challenges for users with physical disabilities and we feel that a haptically enhanced interface could have significant impact assisting in target selection, in particular for these users. To address this, this paper presents a study intended to evaluate haptic effects used with a force feedback mouse on a computer desktop and a prediction algorithm designed to focus those effects on the desired target. This paper introduces the proposed framework and presents experimental results from targeting tasks using differing haptic effects with a group of physically disabled users.

Augmenting graphical user interfaces with haptic assistance for motion-impaired operators

“…Target distracters have been highlighted as a major hindrance to the development of haptic assistance (Keates et al, 2002;Hwang et al, 2003;Holbert and Huber, 2008;Asque et al, 2012b). A target distraction occurs when the cursor has to pass through undesired haptic cues before reaching the destination.…”

“…Studies that have used trajectory prediction for able-bodied participants have only managed a 75% success rate of correctly predicted targets (Murata, 1998). Holbert and Huber (2008) attempted to use target prediction to reduce the effects of haptic target distracters for motion-impaired participants. Significant improvements were obseved in targeting performance when the haptic effect was applied to the correct target.…”

“…A large majority of motion-impaired computer users have difficulty maintaining cursor stability when attempting to select small targets. Many haptic techniques have been investigated to assist target selection (Keates et al, 2002;Langdon et al, 2002b;Holbert and Huber, 2008;Asque et al, 2012b). These techniques have often shown to improve clicking accuracy and reduce targeting times.…”