Abstract
Inducing material properties of a virtual object in the virtual environment has been a challenge for the engineers. Velvet hand illusion (VHI) as a subset of tactile illusion, however, is to produce a virtual smooth and soft texture feeling in a person's hands. In this study, we investigated whether a typical tactile display facilitates producing VHI or not. In order to confirm this, a standard psychophysical experiment technique (magnitude estimation) was employed to evaluate the quality and the intensity of VHI in the tactile display by comparing with two setups of VHI where real velvet was considered as a reference sensation. The experimental result indicated that the tactile display is likely to produce virtual smoothness in the hand although the quality of this feeling was significantly close to the real velvet in the VHI based on two wires setup.
