271 research outputs found
Rendering of Pressure and Textures Using Wearable Haptics in Immersive VR Environments
Haptic systems have only recently started to be designed with wearability
in mind. Compact, unobtrusive, inexpensive, easy-to-wear, and
lightweight haptic devices enable researchers to provide compelling
touch sensations to multiple parts of the body, significantly increasing
the applicability of haptics in many fields, such as robotics, rehabilitation,
gaming, and immersive systems. In this respect, wearable
haptics has a great potential in the fields of virtual and augmented
reality. Being able to touch virtual objects in a wearable and unobtrusive
way may indeed open new exciting avenues for the fields of
haptics and VR. This work presents a novel wearable haptic system
for immersive virtual reality experiences. It conveys the sensation
of touching objects made of different materials, rendering pressure
and texture stimuli through a moving platform and a vibrotactile
abbrv-doi-hyperref-narrowmotor. The device is composed of two
platforms: one placed on the nail side of the finger and one in contact
with the finger pad, connected by three cables. One small servomotor
controls the length of the cables, moving the platform towards or
away from the fingertip. One voice coil actuator, embedded in the
platform, provides vibrotactile stimuli to the user
Rendering of pressure and textures using wearable haptics in immersive VR environments
International audienceHaptic systems have only recently started to be designed with weara-bility in mind. Compact, unobtrusive, inexpensive, easy-to-wear, and lightweight haptic devices enable researchers to provide compelling touch sensations to multiple parts of the body, significantly increasing the applicability of haptics in many fields, such as robotics, rehabilitation , gaming, and immersive systems. In this respect, wearable haptics has a great potential in the fields of virtual and augmented reality. Being able to touch virtual objects in a wearable and unobtrusive way may indeed open new exciting avenues for the fields of haptics and VR. This work presents a novel wearable haptic system for immersive virtual reality experiences. It conveys the sensation of touching objects made of different materials, rendering pressure and texture stimuli through a moving platform and a vibrotactile motor. The device is composed of two platforms: one placed on the nail side of the finger and one in contact with the finger pad, connected by three cables. One small servomotor controls the length of the cables, moving the platform towards or away from the fingertip. One voice coil actuator, embedded in the platform, provides vibrotactile stimuli to the user
An Overview of Wearable Haptic Technologies and Their Performance in Virtual Object Exploration.
We often interact with our environment through manual handling of objects and exploration of their properties. Object properties (OP), such as texture, stiffness, size, shape, temperature, weight, and orientation provide necessary information to successfully perform interactions. The human haptic perception system plays a key role in this. As virtual reality (VR) has been a growing field of interest with many applications, adding haptic feedback to virtual experiences is another step towards more realistic virtual interactions. However, integrating haptics in a realistic manner, requires complex technological solutions and actual user-testing in virtual environments (VEs) for verification. This review provides a comprehensive overview of recent wearable haptic devices (HDs) categorized by the OP exploration for which they have been verified in a VE. We found 13 studies which specifically addressed user-testing of wearable HDs in healthy subjects. We map and discuss the different technological solutions for different OP exploration which are useful for the design of future haptic object interactions in VR, and provide future recommendations
Development of augmented reality serious games with a vibrotactile feedback jacket
Background:
In the past few years, augmented reality (AR) has rapidly advanced and has been applied in different fields. One of the successful AR applications is the immersive and interactive serious games, which can be used for education and learning purposes.
Methods:
In this project, a prototype of an AR serious game is developed and demonstrated. Gamers utilize a head-mounted device and a vibrotactile feedback jacket to explore and interact with the AR serious game. Fourteen vibration actuators are embedded in the vibrotactile feedback jacket to generate immersive AR experience. These vibration actuators are triggered in accordance with the designed game scripts. Various vibration patterns and intensity levels are synthesized in different game scenes. This article presents the details of the entire software development of the AR serious game, including game scripts, game scenes with AR effects design, signal processing flow, behavior design, and communication configuration. Graphics computations are processed using the graphics processing unit in the system.
Results /Conclusions:
The performance of the AR serious game prototype is evaluated and analyzed. The computation loads and resource utilization of normal game scenes and heavy computation scenes are compared. With 14 vibration actuators placed at different body positions, various vibration patterns and intensity levels can be generated by the vibrotactile feedback jacket, providing different real-world feedback. The prototype of this AR serious game can be valuable in building large-scale AR or virtual reality educational and entertainment games. Possible future improvements of the proposed prototype are also discussed in this article
Wearable haptic systems for the fingertip and the hand: taxonomy, review and perspectives
In the last decade, we have witnessed a drastic change in the form factor of audio and vision technologies, from heavy and grounded machines to lightweight devices that naturally fit our bodies. However, only recently, haptic systems have started to be designed with wearability in mind. The wearability of haptic systems enables novel forms of communication, cooperation, and integration between humans and machines. Wearable haptic interfaces are capable of communicating with the human wearers during their interaction with the environment they share, in a natural and yet private way. This paper presents a taxonomy and review of wearable haptic systems for the fingertip and the hand, focusing on those systems directly addressing wearability challenges. The paper also discusses the main technological and design challenges for the development of wearable haptic interfaces, and it reports on the future perspectives of the field. Finally, the paper includes two tables summarizing the characteristics and features of the most representative wearable haptic systems for the fingertip and the hand
Relocating thermal stimuli to the proximal phalanx may not affect vibrotactile sensitivity on the fingertip
Wearable devices that relocate tactile feedback from fingertips can enable
users to interact with their physical world augmented by virtual effects. While
studies have shown that relocating same-modality tactile stimuli can influence
the one perceived at the fingertip, the interaction of cross-modal tactile
stimuli remains unclear. Here, we investigate how thermal cues applied on the
index finger's proximal phalanx affect vibrotactile sensitivity at the
fingertip of the same finger when employed at varying contact pressures. We
designed a novel wearable device that can deliver thermal stimuli at adjustable
contact pressures on the proximal phalanx. Utilizing this device, we measured
the detection thresholds of fifteen participants for 250 Hz sinusoidal
vibration applied on the fingertip while concurrently applying constant cold
and warm stimuli at high and low contact pressures to the proximal phalanx. Our
results revealed no significant differences in detection thresholds across
conditions. These preliminary findings suggest that applying constant thermal
stimuli to other skin locations does not affect fingertip vibrotactile
sensitivity, possibly due to perceptual adaptation. However, the influence of
dynamic multisensory tactile stimuli remains an open question for future
research.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures, conferenc
Electrotactile feedback applications for hand and arm interactions: A systematic review, meta-analysis, and future directions
Haptic feedback is critical in a broad range of
human-machine/computer-interaction applications. However, the high cost and low
portability/wearability of haptic devices remain unresolved issues, severely
limiting the adoption of this otherwise promising technology. Electrotactile
interfaces have the advantage of being more portable and wearable due to their
reduced actuators' size, as well as their lower power consumption and
manufacturing cost. The applications of electrotactile feedback have been
explored in human-computer interaction and human-machine-interaction for
facilitating hand-based interactions in applications such as prosthetics,
virtual reality, robotic teleoperation, surface haptics, portable devices, and
rehabilitation. This paper presents a technological overview of electrotactile
feedback, as well a systematic review and meta-analysis of its applications for
hand-based interactions. We discuss the different electrotactile systems
according to the type of application. We also discuss over a quantitative
congregation of the findings, to offer a high-level overview into the
state-of-art and suggest future directions. Electrotactile feedback systems
showed increased portability/wearability, and they were successful in rendering
and/or augmenting most tactile sensations, eliciting perceptual processes, and
improving performance in many scenarios. However, knowledge gaps (e.g.,
embodiment), technical (e.g., recurrent calibration, electrodes' durability)
and methodological (e.g., sample size) drawbacks were detected, which should be
addressed in future studies.Comment: 18 pages, 1 table, 8 figures, under review in Transactions on
Haptics. This work has been submitted to the IEEE for possible publication.
Copyright may be transferred without notice, after which this version may no
longer be accessible.Upon acceptance of the article by IEEE, the preprint
article will be replaced with the accepted versio
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