How Do Colors Influence the Haptic Perception of Textured Surfaces

Abstract

Colors are widely used in multimodal computer interfaces. As the technology advances, haptic interaction will be integrated into current interfaces. This paper describes the influence of the colors on the haptic perception of textured surfaces based on 8 experiments. Our results show that (1) colors do have influence on the haptic perception, but they do not make the perception error rate higher than when no color is used; (2) Up to 6 types of colors can be used in haptic interfaces without worsening the haptic perception; (3) yellow has an error rate that is statistically significantly lower than that of 5 of 8 color conditions and can be used without worsening the haptic perception; (4) The finding of two special orders for haptic perception demonstrates that human haptic perception is very sensitive to continuously increasing or decreasing changes of the roughness, but has difficulty to discern the randomly changed roughness.