Vision and Haptics Laboratory

The Vision and Haptics Lab is based in the School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences at the University of Reading. Work in the lab investigates human multi-sensory perception using techniques that straddle the boundary between Psychology and Engineering.

Current work is focused in these areas:

(1) Understanding how to optimise bi-manual visual-haptic virtual reality systems; in particular in impact of transforms in the mapping between vision and touch on operator performance. This research is done in collaboration with researchers at RACE, RAICo and the University of Manchester.

(2) Determining how the brain integrates information from multiple sensory modalities for perception and visuomotor control. Current projects are focused on adaptation to temporal delays in virtual reality.

(3) Elucidating the nature of the internal models that humans construct from multi-sensory data. For example, the extent to which the brain models the physical laws governing the environment.

(4) Face perception, social perception and eyewitness testimony using in virtual reality and 3D scanning.

(5) Using physiological measures, eye tracking and EEG to study immersion and presence in virtual reality.

Techniques we use to investigate these areas include: behavioural experiments and psychophysics, stereoscopic presentation, virtual reality, haptic robotics, 3D scanning, EEG, eye tracking, physiological measures and computational modelling.