Heather Culbertson

• PhD, Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics
• Professor (Assistant) at University of Southern California

Virtual Reality (VR) systems have increasingly leveraged multisensory feedback to enrich user experience and mitigate cybersickness. With a similar goal in focus, this paper presents an in-depth exploration of integrating airflow with visual and kinesthetic cues in a VR surfing simulation. Utilizing a custom-designed airflow system and a physical s...

Physical touch, a fundamental aspect of human social interaction, remains largely absent in real-time virtual communication. We present a haptic-enabled multi-user Virtual Reality (VR) system that facilitates real-time, bi-directional social touch communication among physically distant users. We developed wearable gloves and forearm sleeves, embedd...

Social touch is a common method of communication between individuals, but touch cues alone provide only a glimpse of the entire interaction. Visual and auditory cues are also present in these interactions, and increase the expressiveness and recognition of the conveyed information. However, most mediated touch interactions have focused on providing...

We explore the effect of contextual grounding in amplifying the conveyance of social information via mediated touch. We implemented two touch modalities for 6 emotion-based scenarios to capture a broader spectrum of haptic feedback: normal indentation and skin-slip. Participants were provided emotional touch cues with no context and were asked to r...

Current Virtual Reality (VR) environments lack the haptic signals that humans experience during real-life interactions, such as the sensation of texture during lateral movement on a surface. Adding realistic haptic textures to VR environments requires a model that generalizes to variations of a user's interaction and to the wide variety of existing...

Perception in robot manipulation has been actively explored with the goal of advancing and integrating vision and touch for global and local feature extraction. However, it is difficult to perceive certain object internal states, and the integration of visual and haptic perception is not compact and is easily biased. We propose to address these lim...

Perception in robot manipulation has been actively explored with the goal of advancing and integrating vision and touch for global and local feature extraction. However, it is difficult to perceive certain object internal states, and the integration of visual and haptic perception is not compact and is easily biased. We propose to address these lim...

Objective: This article presents two haptic guidance systems designed to help a clinician keep an ultrasound probe steady when completing ultrasound-assisted needle insertion tasks. These procedures demand spatial reasoning and hand-eye coordination because the clinician must align a needle with the ultrasound probe and extrapolate the needle traj...

Current Virtual Reality (VR) environments lack the rich haptic signals that humans experience during real-life interactions, such as the sensation of texture during lateral movement on a surface. Adding realistic haptic textures to VR environments requires a model that generalizes to variations of a user's interaction and to the wide variety of exi...

Rendering stable hard surfaces is an important problem in haptics; current haptic devices cannot render hard objects and free space together. In our previous work, we addressed these limitations using an encountered-type haptic display system, which showed significant improvements compared to traditional rendering methods. In our approach, we attac...

Data-driven texture modeling and rendering has pushed the limit of realism in haptics. However, the lack of haptic texture databases, difficulties of model interpolation and expansion, and the complexity of real textures prevent data-driven methods from capturing a large variety of textures and from customizing models to suit specific output hardwa...

This work presents a large-scale texture classification method using a novel texture feature Projected Spectral Mapping (PSM) based on audio-tactile crossmodal congruence in unconstrained tool-surface interactions. We describe a quick-computable extraction process for PSM from the proposed crossmodal inter-band spectral mapping (IBSM) that relates...

Touch as a modality in social communication has been getting more attention with recent developments in wearable technology and an increase in awareness of how limited physical contact can lead to touch starvation and feelings of depression. Although several mediated touch methods have been developed for conveying emotional support, the transfer of...

During social interactions, people use auditory, visual, and haptic cues to convey their thoughts, emotions, and intentions. Due to weight, energy, and other hardware constraints, it is difficult to create devices that completely capture the complexity of human touch. Here we explore whether a sparse representation of human touch is sufficient to c...

Rendering stable hard surfaces is an important problem in haptics for many tasks, including training simulators for orthopedic surgery or dentistry. Current impedance devices cannot provide enough force and stiffness to render a wall, and the high friction and inertia of admittance devices make it difficult to render free space. We propose to addre...

During social interactions, people use auditory, visual, and haptic cues to convey their thoughts, emotions, and intentions. Due to weight, energy, and other hardware constraints, it is difficult to create devices that completely capture the complexity of human touch. Here we explore whether a sparse representation of human touch is sufficient to c...

A common and effective form of social touch is stroking on the forearm. We seek to replicate this stroking sensation using haptic illusions. This work compares two methods that provide sequential discrete stimulation: sequential normal indentation and sequential lateral skin-slip using discrete actuators. Our goals are to understand which form of s...

We describe the design and evaluation of PIV, a personalizable and inconspicuous vibrotactile breathing pacer. Given the prevalence and adverse impact of anxiety and anxiety disorders, our goal is to develop a technology that helps people regulate their anxiety through paced breathing. We examined two previously unstudied questions: What is an effe...

Touch-produced sounds in tool-surface interactions convey rich information about textured surface properties and provide direct feedback about how users interact with the surface. This paper presents a statistical learning-based approach for modeling and rendering touch-produced sounds in real time. We apply a data-driven modeling method, which rec...

A continuous stroking sensation on the skin can convey messages or emotion cues. We seek to induce this sensation using a combination of illusory motion and lateral stroking via a haptic device. Our system provides discrete lateral skin-slip on the forearm with rotating tactors, which independently provide lateral skin-slip in a timed sequence. We...

A continuous stroking sensation on the skin can convey messages or emotion cues. We seek to induce this sensation using a combination of illusory motion and lateral stroking via a haptic device. Our system provides discrete lateral skin-slip on the forearm with rotating tactors, which independently provide lateral skin-slip in a timed sequence. We...

Resonant frequency skin stretch uses cyclic lateral skin stretches matching the skin's resonant frequency to create highly noticeable stimuli, signifying a new approach for wearable haptic stimulation. Three experiments were performed to explore biomechanical and perceptual aspects of resonant frequency skin stretch. In the first experiment, effect...

In this article, we present a bi-directional communication scheme that facilitates interaction between a person and a mobile robot that follows the person. A person-following robot can assist people in many applications including load carrying, elder care, and emotional support. However, commercially available personal robot systems usually have li...

This article reviews the technology behind creating artificial touch sensations and the relevant aspects of human touch. We focus on the design and control of haptic devices and discuss the best practices for generating distinct and effective touch sensations. Artificial haptic sensations can present information to users, help them complete a task,...

Emotion regulation in the wild (ER-in-the-wild) is an important grand challenge problem of increasing focus, and is hard to approach effectively with point solutions. We provide HCI researchers and designers thinking about ERin- the-wild with an ER-in-the-wild system architecture derived from mHealth, the Emotion Regulation Process Model (PM), and...

Ungrounded haptic devices for virtual reality (VR) applications lack the ability to convincingly render the sensations of a grasped virtual object's rigidity and weight. We present Grabity, a wearable haptic device designed to simulate kinesthetic pad opposition grip forces and weight for grasping virtual objects in VR. The device is mounted on the...

This paper presents a system of two double-gimbal control moment gyroscopes (CMGs) for providing ungrounded kinesthetic haptic feedback. By spinning a second flywheel opposite the first, and rotating them through opposite trajectories, undesired gyroscopic effects can be eliminated, isolating a single torque axis. This produces a moment pulse propo...

This article presents the design and validation of an ungrounded haptic augmented reality system that alters the roughness and friction of a rigid three-dimensional object. The user touches the object via a custom haptic stylus; the stylus tip is a ball mounted in a socket that has low internal friction and produces minimal vibrations, necessary co...

WAVES, a Wearable Asymmetric Vibration Excitation System, is a novel wearable haptic device for presenting three dimensions of translation and rotation guidance cues. In contrast to traditional vibration feedback, which usually requires that users learn to interpret a binary cue, asymmetric vibrations have been shown to induce a pulling sensation i...

Ultrasound-based interventions require experience and good hand-eye coordination. Especially for non-experts, correctly guiding a handheld probe towards a target, and staying there, poses a remarkable challenge. We augment a commercial vision-based instrument guidance system with haptic feedback to keep operators on target. A user study shows signi...

Interacting with physical objects through a tool elicits tactile and kinesthetic sensations that comprise your haptic impression of the object. These cues, however, are largely missing from interactions with virtual objects, yielding an unrealistic user experience. This article evaluates the realism of virtual surfaces rendered using haptic models...

When subjected to asymmetric accelerations at the fingertips, a human perceives an ungrounded pulling sensation. This paper presents a model and analysis of the underlying physics and perception behind this pulling sensation. We design a system with voicecoil actuators that are driven with step-ramp current pulses to create asymmetric accelerations...

Flywheel rotation provides a means for ungrounded kinesthetic (force) feedback, but devices that use a single flywheel to generate moment pulses inherently generate undesirable torque in directions orthogonal to the desired torque. We present a novel dual-flywheel gyro-moment haptic device capable of delivering short moment pulses about isolated ax...

The haptic sensations one feels when interacting with physical objects create a rich and varied impression of the objects, allowing one to gather information about texture, shape, compressibility, and other physical characteristics. The human sense of touch excels at sensing and interpreting these haptic cues, even when the object is felt through a...

Dragging a tool across a textured surface produces vibrations that convey important perceptual information about the interaction and the underlying qualities of the surface. These vibrations depend on the motions of the tool and respond to both normal force and tangential speed. This paper explores various methods of simulating haptic texture inter...

Texture gives real objects an important perceptual dimension that is largely missing from virtual haptic interactions due to limitations of standard modeling and rendering approaches. This paper presents a set of methods for creating a haptic texture model from tool-surface interaction data recorded by a human in a natural and unconstrained manner....

This paper introduces the Penn Haptic Texture Toolkit (HaTT), a publicly available repository of haptic texture models for use by the research community. HaTT includes 100 haptic texture and friction models, the recorded data from which the models were made, images of the textures, and the code and methods necessary to render these textures using a...

The Penn Haptic Texture Toolkit (HaTT) is a collection of 100 haptic texture and friction models, the recorded data from which the models were made, images of the textures, and the code and methods necessary to render these textures using an impedance-type haptic device such as a SensAble Phantom Omni. This toolkit was developed to provide haptics...

form only given, as follows. The Penn Haptic Texture Toolkit (HaTT) is a collection of 100 haptic texture and friction models, the recorded data from which the models were made, images of the textures, and the code and methods necessary to render these textures using an impedance-type haptic device such as a SensAble Phantom Omni. This toolkit was...

If you pick up a tool and drag its tip across a table, a rock, or a swatch of fabric, you are able to feel variations in the textures even though you are not directly touching them. These vibrations are characteristic of the material and the motions made when interacting with the surface. This paper presents a new method for creating haptic texture...

Dragging a tool across a textured object creates rich high-frequency vibrations that distinctly convey the physical interaction between the tool tip and the object surface. Varying one's scanning speed and normal force alters these vibrations, but it does not change the perceived identity of the tool or the surface. Previous research developed a pr...