A Study on Immersion and Presence of a Portable Hand Haptic System for Immersive Virtual Reality

Abstract

This paper proposes a portable hand haptic system using Leap Motion as a haptic interface that can be used in various virtual reality (VR) applications. The proposed hand haptic system was designed as an Arduino-based sensor architecture to enable a variety of tactile senses at low cost, and is also equipped with a portable wristband. As a haptic system designed for tactile feedback, the proposed system first identifies the left and right hands and then sends tactile senses (vibration and heat) to each fingertip (thumb and index finger). It is incorporated into a wearable band-type system, making its use easy and convenient. Next, hand motion is accurately captured using the sensor of the hand tracking system and is used for virtual object control, thus achieving interaction that enhances immersion. A VR application was designed with the purpose of testing the immersion and presence aspects of the proposed system. Lastly, technical and statistical tests were carried out to assess whether the proposed haptic system can provide a new immersive presence to users. According to the results of the presence questionnaire and the simulator sickness questionnaire, we confirmed that the proposed hand haptic system, in comparison to the existing interaction that uses only the hand tracking system, provided greater presence and a more immersive environment in the virtual reality.

Study of Multimodal Interfaces and the Improvements on Teleoperation

“…To provide haptic feedback, we constructed a custom haptic capable glove inspired by [55], which incorporated a vibration motor on the thumb and index finger of the glove. The vibration intensity in their study was accomplished and influenced by the proportion of the size of the virtual object the user was colliding and touching with.…”

“…We are inspired by a similar study using appropriate ''collision'' signals to transmit variable frequency tactile feedback [1]. In a more previous study investigating vibrotactile approach, vibration intensity applied to users was proportional to the size of the virtual object being manipulated [55]. We adopt this approach where instead, vibration intensity is proportional to kinetic energy K E and object penetration P of each finger segment in simulation.…”

Are Modern Head-Mounted Displays Sexist? A Systematic Review on Gender Differences in HMD-Mediated Virtual Reality

“…Recent developments have suggested that the use of the term CS may be appropriate referring to the symptoms experienced when the person's visual input is completely computer-generated, as in the HMD-mediated VR (see e.g., Duzmanska et al, 2018 ); however, there is now no consensus on which terminology should be used in relationship to modern VR technologies. Generally, both SS and CS are being used in the scientific literature to describe the unpleasant ill symptoms evoked by the use of various types of VR technology (e.g., Bruck and Watters, 2011 ; Serge and Moss, 2015 ; Lee et al, 2017 ). In the present article, for simplicity, we decided to use the terminology “Simulator Sickness” referring to SS and CS.…”

Controller-free Hand Tracking for Grab-and-place Tasks in Immersive Virtual Reality: Design Elements and their Empirical Study

“…Another factor may be that any haptic feedback may support perceived naturalness: Users may have found it unnatural to manipulate objects with their hands without the sense of touch. Combining the Leap Motion with a haptic feedback device can create stronger feelings of presence and immersion than the Leap Motion on its own [1]. Though the Oculus controller did not map haptic feedback to interaction with virtual objects, it was itself a physical object, with buttons to press to engage in interaction.…”