Evaluation of multipoint contact interfaces in haptic perception of shapes

This chapter presents the evaluation of a multicontact point interface for the shape recognition of objects. A set-up constituted of an Haptic Interface system with several contact points, from one up to three, was used to present to four different subjects a set of 6 basic shapes. The experimental results suggest that the number of contact points do not produce an improvement of the ability to identify shapes, and this is strongly in contrast with what happens in touch with bare fingers. These findings confirmed results already found in other works, where experiments were conducted with fingers covered by sheaths, and provide indications for the design of more effective multipoint haptic interfaces.