Can haptic feedback improve the perception of self-motion in virtual reality?

This paper describes an experiment which was conducted to evaluate the influence of haptic feedback on the perception of self-motion in virtual reality. Participants were asked to estimate the angles of turns made during a passive visual navigation. Sometimes, during a turn, a haptic feedback was sent to the dominant hand of the participants. This haptic feedback consisted in rotating the participants' fist by the same angular value as the visual turn. The presence of haptic feedback globally influenced the performances of the participants. On average, with haptic feedback, the participants less under-estimated the angles the turns made in the visual navigation. These results suggest that the perception of self-motion could be improved in virtual reality by using an appropriate haptic feedback. Haptic stimulation during navigation could partially substitute for the missing information provided by proprioception and vestibular system.