Abstract

Wearable vibrotactile devices are increasingly used in virtual reality, teleoperation and neurorehabilitation, but objective EEG evaluation of glove-mediated touch remains limited. We compared EEG recorded during natural object interaction with EEG recorded when tactile feedback was reproduced through a vibrotactile smart glove. Data were collected with an eight-channel wireless headset while participants interacted with three object types (bottle, cube, and sphere) in natural-touch and glove-mediated conditions. An exploratory model trained on natural-touch data and tested on glove-mediated trials yielded rounded cross-condition accuracies of 83%, 78%, and 68% for bottle vs. rest, cube vs. rest, and sphere vs. rest, respectively. These findings suggest that some object-related EEG patterns may carry across conditions, but they should not be interpreted as evidence of physiological equivalence. Supplementary analyses using repeated-run evaluation, band-power and ERD/ERS summaries, temporal-window inspection, and channel ablation were included as cautious interpretability checks. The results underscore the need for larger subject-independent studies, stronger artifact-control pipelines, formal statistical testing, and richer haptic conditions before asserting equivalence to natural touch.

IPC Classification

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