The way in which we perceive materials and objects affects us, and the decisions we make, every day, and in many different ways.

We decide whether to buy clothes based on their 'look' and 'feel'; we decide whether to eat a meal based on its 'look', 'smell' and 'taste';; we listen to music because we 'like the sound'. It's not surprising, therefore, that there is a lot of interest in being able to measure our perceptual responses and in using this information to make predictions of our subjective perception of a material or object from measurements of its physical attributes. But is this really possible?

This talk will discuss the conclusions of a recently completed EU research project, led by NPL, which addressed these questions. The project investigated whether, and how, our perception of the naturalness of various types of material is determined by the physical properties of the material.