Perceiving material interactions: measuring the perception of bounciness as a function of surface smoothness. K Ingvarsdóttir |
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Lund University Cognitive Science, Lund University, Sweden
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| In general a bouncy object will bounce higher on a hard surface, and since hard surfaces tend to have smoother texture (tiles) than soft surfaces (carpet), one wonders whether people can use the texture information of a plane to estimate the bounciness of a colliding object. In this experiment a two-alternative forced choice task was used to measure perception of bounciness as a function of surface smoothness. Four subjects observed videos of a basketball bouncing on various surfaces. Each trial consisted of two short videos presented in a sequence, where the task was to judge which condition was bouncier. The plane’s texture was altered across videos, from rough to smooth, while the bouncing was kept fixed. 3D computer graphics software was used to create 6 different surfaces, by altering the noise size of an irregular shaped Voronoi texture. The bouncing was created using a physics engine. It was expected that the perception of bounciness would increase in line with the function of smoothness, however, no difference was found between the roughest and the smoothest texture. Instead, a semi-smooth surface was perceived bouncier than the rest, which introduces a new perception criterion. The results are discussed with respect to material affordances. |
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