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Poster Session A: Tuesday, August 12, 1:30 – 4:30 pm, de Brug & E‑Hall

A Virtual Manipulation Task to Probe Human Interactions with Diverse Physical Objects

Giacomo Aldegheri¹, Roland Fleming¹; ¹Justus Liebig Universität Gießen

Presenter: Giacomo Aldegheri

Humans are able to successfully interact with objects with vastly different physical characteristics. For example, hard objects, such as boxes, and soft objects, such as cloth or rope, behave in entirely different ways when manipulated. We designed a controlled yet ecological behavioral task to probe how human subjects interact with objects with diverse physical characteristics. Subjects are shown, on a computer screen, an 'arena' including an object, a simple manipulator (a rectangular pusher) and a goal indicated by a location within the arena. Using the keyboard, they can rotate and translate the pusher, and their task is to use it to push the object into the goal. On each trial, the object to be moved belongs to one of three categories: box, rope, or cloth. This task allows systematically comparing human behavior across object categories in a simplified scenario, providing an ideal testing ground for computational models of object manipulation and intuitive physics.

Topic Area: Object Recognition & Visual Attention

Extended Abstract: Full Text PDF