Research Topics | Massimiliano Di Luca

Computational Modelling

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Computational modelling is used to explain perceptual decisions, predict behaviour, and guide the design of interactive systems. The work includes Bayesian cue integration, Kalman filtering, signal processing, simulation, data-driven haptic rendering, psychometric modelling, movement analysis, and machine learning.

Many of the models address uncertainty. Sensory signals are noisy, delayed, context-dependent, and often only indirectly related to the property being judged. Formal models help explain how people combine evidence across modalities, how expectations shape perceived timing, why visual-haptic conflicts change perceived stiffness, and how tactile information may be encoded by skin and mechanoreceptor systems.

The modelling strand also supports open resources and technology translation. It underpins datasets and catalogues for XR interaction, tools for timing and psychometric analysis, models of musical synchronisation, simulations of tactile ageing, and methods for turning perceptual knowledge into haptic rendering, VR measurement, and human-machine interaction systems.

Extended Reality

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Extended reality and virtual reality work in this programme focuses on immersive systems that are shaped by perception rather than only by hardware capability. The question is not simply whether an XR system can render an image, object, hand, or environment, but whether the result supports action, ownership, timing, social presence, and usable feedback.

The work includes virtual hand ownership, hand tracking, virtual grasping, locomotion techniques, XR text entry, mixed-reality collision awareness, augmented music rehearsal, telepresence, and public-facing immersive experiences. Several projects turn research into infrastructure: open datasets, catalogues, software, lab resources, and translational platforms for cultural, creative, and industrial applications.

Timing and multisensory consistency are especially important in XR. Delays between movement and visual or haptic feedback can change perceived stiffness, synchrony, ownership, and usability. The XR strand therefore combines psychophysics, measurement methods, haptics, modelling, and design to build immersive systems that feel responsive and perceptually grounded.

Haptics

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Haptics is the part of the research programme concerned with touch as an active, informative, and designable signal. The work asks how people perceive texture, softness, weight, force, vibration, and contact, and how those perceptual mechanisms can be used to build haptic systems that feel useful rather than merely mechanically accurate.

A central theme is that touch is not a single measurement channel. Softness, for example, depends on forces, finger position, vision, proprioception, timing, and the movement used to explore an object. The same physical object can feel different when information arrives late, when visual and haptic signals disagree, or when different fingers contribute different evidence during a grasp.

This topic also includes applied haptic rendering and wearable feedback: vibrotactile guidance, skin stretch, tactile augmentation, wrist and hand devices, virtual stiffness, and haptic feedback for XR and mixed reality. Across these projects, psychophysical measurement is used to identify what people can reliably detect and discriminate, while modelling and system design translate those findings into interactive devices, demonstrations, and public resources.

Multisensory Perception

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Multisensory perception studies how people infer the state of the world from signals that are useful but imperfect. Vision, touch, audition, and proprioception each carry partial information, and the brain must decide when signals belong together, how reliable they are, and how they should influence perception and action.

The work spans cue integration, visual-haptic perception, body ownership, spatial perception, depth, material appearance, object shape, and crossmodal timing. It treats perception as a process of interpretation under uncertainty: sensory signals are noisy, sometimes ambiguous, and often affected by movement, context, prior experience, and recent adaptation.

This topic connects basic perceptual science with technology design. Understanding how multisensory signals are combined helps explain why delayed visual feedback can change perceived stiffness, why a virtual hand can feel more or less like one’s own, why synchrony matters for integration, and how XR and haptic systems can be made more intelligible by respecting perceptual constraints.

Psychophysics

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Psychophysics provides the measurement backbone of the research programme. It is used to quantify what people perceive, how reliably they can discriminate sensory signals, how their judgments change with context, and how experimental apparatus affects the signals that reach the observer.

The methods include thresholds, just-noticeable differences, points of subjective equality, psychometric functions, reaction-time analysis, duration judgments, temporal-order judgments, forced-choice tasks, user evaluations, and studies of adaptation and recalibration. These tools make it possible to connect behaviour to the physical properties of stimuli and to the design constraints of devices.

Psychophysics is also central to translation. Whether the goal is a wearable haptic system, a VR hand-tracking method, an XR interaction technique, a music rehearsal platform, or a tactile ageing study, behavioural measurement provides the evidence needed to decide what works, what fails, and what people actually perceive.

Temporal Perception

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Temporal perception asks how time is perceived when there is no dedicated sensory organ for time. The work studies synchrony, temporal order, duration, rhythm, reaction time, recalibration, and the way perceived timing changes with context, expectation, attention, and action.

Time is also a critical feature of multisensory integration. Signals that arrive together are more likely to be interpreted as belonging to the same event, while artificially introduced asynchronies can prevent integration or change the perceived event itself. Short exposure to an asynchrony can recalibrate simultaneity, making later discrepancies appear less pronounced, and these aftereffects can transfer across sensory pairings depending on how signals are presented.

The same questions matter for technology. Computers, cameras, displays, audio devices, trackers, and VR systems introduce delays, and those delays affect both experiments and user experience. This topic therefore includes methods for measuring stimulus timing, psychophysical procedures for estimating temporal sensitivity, and applied work on timing in XR, haptics, and musical ensemble performance.