Auditory-Tactile Congruence for Synthesis of Adaptive Pain Expressions in RoboPatients

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Nadipineni, Saitarun, Sirithunge, Chapa, Xie, Yue, Iida, Fumiya, Lalitharatne, Thilina Dulantha
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Nadipineni, Saitarun
Sirithunge, Chapa
Xie, Yue
Iida, Fumiya
Lalitharatne, Thilina Dulantha
author_facet Nadipineni, Saitarun
Sirithunge, Chapa
Xie, Yue
Iida, Fumiya
Lalitharatne, Thilina Dulantha
contents Misdiagnosis can result in delayed treatment and patient harm. Robotic patient simulators (robopatients) provide a controlled framework for training and evaluating clinicians in rare and complex cases. We investigate auditory tactile congruence in the synthesis of adaptive vocal pain expressions for robopatients. The system generates pain vocalizations in response to tactile stimuli applied during abdominal palpation. Haptic input is captured through an abdominal phantom and processed using an internal palpation-to-pain mapping model that drives acoustic output. To evaluate perceptual congruence between palpation force and synthesized pain expressions, we conducted a study comprising 7,680 trials with 20 participants. Participants rated perceived pain intensity based solely on auditory feedback. We analyzed the influence of acoustic parameters on agreement between applied force and perceived pain. Results indicate that amplitude and pitch significantly affect perceptual agreement, independent of pain sound category. Increased palpation force was associated with higher agreement ratings, consistent with psychophysical scaling effects. Among the tested acoustic features, pitch exerted a stronger influence than amplitude on perceived congruence. These findings demonstrate that modulation of pitch and amplitude is critical for achieving perceptually coherent auditory tactile mappings in robotic pain simulation. The proposed framework supports the development of high fidelity robotic patient simulators and provides a platform for studying multidimensional representations of pain in embodied robotic systems.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2506_11827
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Auditory-Tactile Congruence for Synthesis of Adaptive Pain Expressions in RoboPatients
Nadipineni, Saitarun
Sirithunge, Chapa
Xie, Yue
Iida, Fumiya
Lalitharatne, Thilina Dulantha
Robotics
Human-Computer Interaction
Misdiagnosis can result in delayed treatment and patient harm. Robotic patient simulators (robopatients) provide a controlled framework for training and evaluating clinicians in rare and complex cases. We investigate auditory tactile congruence in the synthesis of adaptive vocal pain expressions for robopatients. The system generates pain vocalizations in response to tactile stimuli applied during abdominal palpation. Haptic input is captured through an abdominal phantom and processed using an internal palpation-to-pain mapping model that drives acoustic output. To evaluate perceptual congruence between palpation force and synthesized pain expressions, we conducted a study comprising 7,680 trials with 20 participants. Participants rated perceived pain intensity based solely on auditory feedback. We analyzed the influence of acoustic parameters on agreement between applied force and perceived pain. Results indicate that amplitude and pitch significantly affect perceptual agreement, independent of pain sound category. Increased palpation force was associated with higher agreement ratings, consistent with psychophysical scaling effects. Among the tested acoustic features, pitch exerted a stronger influence than amplitude on perceived congruence. These findings demonstrate that modulation of pitch and amplitude is critical for achieving perceptually coherent auditory tactile mappings in robotic pain simulation. The proposed framework supports the development of high fidelity robotic patient simulators and provides a platform for studying multidimensional representations of pain in embodied robotic systems.
title Auditory-Tactile Congruence for Synthesis of Adaptive Pain Expressions in RoboPatients
topic Robotics
Human-Computer Interaction
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.11827