Skip to main content
Log in

Haptic interpersonal communication: improvement of actions coordination in collaborative virtual environments

  • Original Article
  • Published:
Virtual Reality Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

This article explores the use of haptic feedback for interpersonal communication in collaborative virtual environments. After a detailed presentation of all communication mechanisms involved, we propose the investigation of a low-level communication approach through the feedthrough mechanism. This channel is used to communicate kinematic information about a partner’s gestures during closely coupled collaboration. Several communication metaphors, with complementary behaviors, were investigated to improve the coordination between two partners during an assembly task. The results clearly show the role of communication strategies for the improvement of gesture coordination and highlight the correlation between applied force and the level of efficiency.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7
Fig. 8
Fig. 9
Fig. 10
Fig. 11
Fig. 12
Fig. 13
Fig. 14
Fig. 15

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Ammi M, Ferreira A (2007) Robotic assisted micromanipulation system using virtual fixtures and metaphors. ICRA 454–460. http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?arnumber=4209133

  • Basdogan C, Ho C-h, Srinivasan MA, Slater M (2000) An experimental study on the role of touch in shared virtual environments. ACM Trans Comput Hum Interact 7:443–460

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bly SA, Harrison SR, Irwin S (1993) Media spaces: bringing people together in a video, audio, and computing environment. Commun ACM 36(1):28–47

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Catlin T, Bush P, Yankelovich N (1989) InterNote: extending a hypermedia framework to support annotative collaboration. In: Proceeding of hypertext’89 ACM conference, November 1989, pp 365–378

  • Cha J, Eid MA, El-Saddik A (2009) Touchable 3D video system. ACM Trans Multimed Comput Commun Appl (TOMCCAP) 5(4):1–25

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chan A, MacLean KE, McGrenere J (2008) Designing haptic icons to support collaborative turn-taking. Int J Hum Comput Stud 66:333–355

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cockburn A, Weir P (1999) An investigation of groupware support for collaborative awareness through distortion-oriented views. Int J Hum Comput Interact 11(3):231–255

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Codella CF, Jalili R, Koved L, Lewis JB, Ling DT, Lipscomb JS, Rabenhorst DA, Wang CP, Norton A, Sweeney P, Turk G (1992) Interactive simulation in a multi-person virtual world. In: CHI 1992, pp 329–334

  • Collier G (1985) Emotional expression. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Hillsdale, NJ. http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=28053073

  • Dix AJ (1997) Challenges for cooperative work on the web: an analytical approach. Comput Supported Coop Work 6(2/3):135–156

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  • Ellis C, Gibbs SJ, Rein GL (1991) Groupware: some issues and experiences. Commun ACM 34(1):38–58

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Enriquez M, MacLean KE et al (2006) Haptic phonemes: basic building blocks of haptic communication. In: Proceedings of 8th int’l conf. on multimodal interfaces (ICMI ‘06). Banff, Canada, pp 302–309

  • Gentry S (2005) Dancing cheek to cheek: haptic communication between partner dancers and swing as a finite state machine. Ph.D thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  • Glynn S, Fekieta R, Henning RA (2001) Use of force-feedback joysticks to promote teamwork in virtual teleoperation. In: Proceedings of the 45th annual meeting of the human factors and ergonomics society, 8–12 October 2001, Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN, pp 1911–1915

  • Grasset R (2004) Environnement de réalité augmentée 3D cooperative: approche colocalisée sur table. ARTIS-GRAVIR/IMAG-INRIA

  • Grasset R, Lamb P, Billinghurst M (2005) Evaluation of mixed-space collaboration. In: ISMAR ‘05: Proceedings of the 4th IEEE/ACM international symposium on mixed and augmented reality, pp 90–99

  • Gutwin C, Greenberg S (1999) The effects of workspace awareness support on the usability of real-time distributed groupware. ACM Trans Comput Hum Interact 6(3):243–281

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gutwin C, Greenberg S (2000) The mechanics of collaboration: developing low cost usability evaluation methods for shared workspaces. In: Proceedings of the 9th IEEE international workshops on enabling technologies: infrastructure for collaborative enterprises, 4–16 June 2000. WETICE. IEEE Computer Society, Washington, DC, pp 98–103

  • Hill J, Gutwin C (2003) Awareness support in a groupware widget toolkit. In: GROUP’03: Proceedings of the 2003 international ACM SIGGROUP conference on supporting group work. Sanibel Island, Florida, USA, pp 258–267

  • Kim Y-S, Ryu J-H (2009) Performance analysis of teleoperation systems with different haptic and video time-delay. In: Proceedings of the ICROS-SICE international joint conference 2009. Fukuoka, Japan, pp 3371–3375

  • Kjölberg J, Sallnäs E-L (2002) Supporting object handling and hand over tasks in haptic Collaborative Virtual Environments. In: Wall S, Riedel B, Crossan A, McGee MR (eds) Proceedings of Eurohaptics′02, May 2002, pp 71–76

  • Marsh J, Glencross M, Pettifer S, Hubbold RJ (2006) A network architecture supporting consistent rich behavior in collaborative interactive applications. IEEE Trans Vis Comput Graph 12(3):405–416

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Peña Pérez Negrón A, de Antonio Jiménez A (2009) Using avatar’s nonverbal communication to monitor collaboration in a task-oriented learning situation in a CVE. Workshop on intelligent and innovative support for collaborative learning activities. Rhodes, Greece, 8–13 June 2009, pp 19–26

  • Pinelle D, Gutwin C, Greenberg S (2003) Task analysis for groupware usability evaluation: modeling shared-workspace tasks with the mechanics of collaboration. ACM Trans Comput Hum Interact 10(4):281–311

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Redfern S, Naughton N (2002) Collaborative virtual environments to support communication and community in internet-based distance education. J Inf Technol Educ 1(3):201–211

    Google Scholar 

  • Reed KB, Peshkin MA (2008) Physical collaboration of human-human and human-robot teams. IEEE Trans Haptics 1(2):108–120

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sallnas E, Rassmus-grohn K, Sjostrom C (2000) Supporting presence in collaborative environments by haptic force feedback. ACM Trans Comput Hum Interact 7(4):461–476

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shergill SS, Bays PM, Frith CD, Wolpert DM (2003) Two eyes for an eye: the neuroscience of force escalation. Science 301(5630):187

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Simard J, Ammi M, Auvray M (2010) Closely coupled collaboration for search tasks. In: Proceedings of the 17th ACM symposium on Virtual Reallity Software and Technology (VRST), vol 1. pp 181–182

  • Takemura H, Kishino F (1992) Cooperative work environment using virtual workspace. In: CSCW ‘92 proceedings, Toronto, Canada, pp 226–232

  • Varadaradjou ES, Dax P, Grumbach A (2006) Improved communication in virtual worlds. In: Virtual reality international conference. Rocquencourt, Avril, pp 103–111

  • Yano H, Iwata H (1994) Collaboration in virtual environment with force feedback. IPSJ SIG Notes 94(59):31–34

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Mehdi Ammi.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Simard, J., Ammi, M. Haptic interpersonal communication: improvement of actions coordination in collaborative virtual environments. Virtual Reality 16, 173–186 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10055-011-0201-2

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10055-011-0201-2

Keywords

Navigation