Haptics

Haptic communications refers to the ability to touch, feel and to physically manipulate objects in a remote (real or virtual) environment via technical means. The realization of convincing haptic interactions requires a solid understanding of both kinesthetic and tactile perceptual mechanisms and stimulation principles. This chapter starts with a concise overview of the current state of knowledge in these two areas. Then, we discuss the main performance parameters for haptic interaction systems, and point towards factors that may influence QoE in haptics. So far, the quality experienced by the human during haptic interaction has been mainly evaluated via time-consuming and costly subjective tests and only recently, first preliminary approaches for objective quality evaluation have surfaced. We briefly touch upon this topic and finish the chapter with a discussion of model-based prediction of haptic feedback quality.