Direct Haptics in MASSIVE's Virtual Reality experiences

Abstract

Virtual Reality (VR) is around since early on the last century, although the applications were simple or did not work very well due to several hardware limitations. However, lots of new technologies and techniques have been researched and developed since then. In the last decade, due to the significant evolution of the hardware and software, a new rise of interest in VR has been experienced. Nowadays, there are several companies researching and developing devices dedicated to virtual reality experiences. While devices that cover our visual and auditory senses are relatively well developed, hardware that focuses on the remaining three senses (haptic, olfatory and gustatory) is in its childhood. Only recently, there has been a rise of interest in researching technologies that provide solutions to handle those senses. Over the years there have been different approaches to solve the problem of providing haptic feedback from virtual objects. These attempts were mostly based on devices like gloves or surfaces that resorted at different stimulation techniques in order to provide the user with the sense of touch as well as to limit his hand or fingers movement. These devices, however, face significant limitations, as the current understading of the human haptic perception is quite limited. Hence, the need for alternatives to these devices is identified. The same way, there is a lack of solutions capable of providing haptic feedback to the users in a transparent way when they touch virtual objects. A different approach were real objects are used to provide haptic feedback to the users has potential to be the solution. Related research confirms that the use of real objects in virtual environments affects positively VR experiences. Therefore, this dissertation addresses those problems by proposing a solution for developing an interaction framework based on direct haptics. Thus, the solution will be capable of redirecting the user to the object that he in-tends to touch and, when in contact with virtual objects, the haptic feedback will be delivered from equivalent real objects, without the user realizing the manipulation or losing his sense of presence. In order to specify this solution, the state of the art section of this document presents a concise history of VR, in order to understand how it might change. Haptic interaction is reviewed, haptic devices are presented as well as the current limitations of these devices. It also describe techniques that exploit conflicts in perceptual clues in order to redirect the user around the VE or to make the user perceive small differences in virtual objects, using always the same real object as haptic feedback source. Methodologies and guidelines for design, development and evaluation of interaction frameworks useful for the implementation phase of the solution are also presented. In this dissertation, a functional prototype based on the proposed framework will be created, serving as a proof of concept for posterior validation of this solution. This solution seems to be a good step into addressing the needs identified and it has the potential to be integrated in MASSIVE project. In addition, as this is a recent field of study, any advances are useful to improve the quality of haptic feedback and the sense of presence in immersive virtual environments.