![](bg6.png)
object is most beneficial. Finally, the two in-between
objects A and B, had approximately the same level
of difficulty, but once users made up their minds on
the most and least rough, they could decide on the in-
between ones easier. On top of that some participants
commented on that they could hear the haptic motors
spin, those who did comment on it were told to try
and ignore it. But it is unclear if it had an impact on
the results.
Table 2: The most and least interacted with labeled objects.
The results are created from the fifteen participants.
A B C D
Most Interactions 5 4 6 0
Least Interactions 3 3 4 5
5 CONCLUSION AND FUTURE
WORK
Our experiment demonstrated that information about
the surface roughness of 3D objects can be communi-
cated through the use of tactile sensation achieved by
the built-in vibration capabilities of HTC Vive con-
trollers. With the help of a virtual VR stylus, users
can use the same natural interactions as in real life
to ”feel” the surface of an object. The preliminary
experiment demonstrated that users can order objects
by their perceived vibration surface roughness with-
out visual cues. The test showed that users could rel-
atively fast decide which is the roughest of multiple,
visually identical objects, as well as the smoothest and
order them always correctly.
There are some limitations of this preliminary
study. The limited scope of the test and the limited
number of participants resulted in results which are
too homogeneous and do not show enough variation
to further improve the system. To address these short-
comings, additional experiments are planned. In par-
ticular, we want to investigate the influence of am-
plitude and frequency of the vibrotactile feedback on
the perceived roughness. Another experiment could
explore how much of an impact the sound of the con-
troller has on the haptic feeling as some of the test
participants mentioned that they could hear different
noises from the motors in the controllers.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We would like to thank the participants in the experi-
ment for their time and the anonymous reviewers for
providing helpful feedback and improving the content
of the paper.
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Preliminary Study on the Use of Off-the-Shelf VR Controllers for Vibrotactile Differentiation of Levels of Roughness on Meshes
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