"Let’s Meet and Work it Out": Understanding and Mitigating Encountered-Type of Haptic Devices Failure Modes in VR

Abstract

Encountered-type of Haptic devices (ETHD) are robotic interfaces physically overlaying virtual counterparts prior to a user interaction in Virtual Reality. They theoretically reliably provide haptics in Virtual environments, yet they raise several intrinsic design challenges to properly display rich haptic feedback and interactions in VR applications. In this paper, we use a Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) approach to identify, organise and analyse the failure modes and their causes in the different stages of an ETHD scenario and highlight appropriate solutions from the literature to mitigate them. We help justify these interfaces' lack of deployment, to ultimately identify guidelines for future ETHD designers.

PalmEx: Adding Palmar Force-Feedback for 3D Manipulation With Haptic Exoskeleton Gloves

“…A mitigation strategy for this potential speed failure would reduce the user's hand speed and/or the object of interest speed, to a maximum of 29cm/s. This solution ("visuo-proprioceptive illusion") is a common strategy for speed related limitations [2].…”

“…Their main limitation is that they are required to be held continuously within the hand. A promising perspective is to let the users' hands free and to integrate palmar contact through encountered-type devices [2], on-demand [7] or wearable interfaces [16].…”

“…We rely on the commercially available SenseGlove DK1 exoskeleton 2 . This exoskeleton glove relies on strings attached to the fingertips and is actuated with motors and friction brakes.…”

“…Bare-hands interactions however enable easy-to-access virtual environments even for novice users, with interactions seamlessly resembling to the real world ones, such as direct manipulation [1]. In these regards, many implementations currently aim to let the user's hands unencumbered of handheld technologies while providing haptic feedback [2].…”

When Tangibles Become Deformable: Studying Pseudo-Stiffness Perceptual Thresholds in a VR Grasping Task

“…Instantiating a 1:1 virtual:physical mapping of objects such as Substitutional Reality [40] can be timeconsuming, costly, and increase drastically the number of props in a VR scene. Enabling physical interactions using a limited amount of physical props is therefore investigated [13], either by displacing the physical world, using robotised interfaces displaying the props in a N:1 virtual:physical mapping [11]; or by displacing the virtual world, using visuo-haptic illusions, to redirect the users' towards their chosen object of interest [5,14,17].…”