Investigating Haptic Feedback for Human Interactions in Virtual Environment

Abstract

The sense of touch is essential for our daily life activities. It helps human beings to differentiate the characteristics of the objects in the environments. Same goes in Virtual Reality (VR), it not just replicating the real-world objects but the haptic sensation as well. Integrating electro-cutaneous device and haptic feedback system enables the simulation of touch sensation inside the virtual environment. In this project, the haptic glove prototype was built to produce touch feedback through vibration and implementing it to the virtual environment inside Unity3D. The haptic glove is controlled with Arduino and programmed in Unity3D to create a relationship between the haptic device and the Leap Motion Controller (LMC). The Leap Motion Controller detect and track the user’s hands and emulate the virtual hands displayed in Unity3D. Different sizes of virtual cubes were created inside the Unity3D to evaluate the functionalities and the capabilities of the haptic glove. The collision of the virtual hand and the cubes shall trigger the vibration sensation to the user’s fingertips. The experiments show that the addition of haptic device promotes better interactivity between the user and the virtual objects. In this work, the presence of virtual objects is perceived in the form of vibration. In future work, we shall design the efficient system to reach the three desired features of VR: immersion, interaction and presence.