RoomShift: Room-scale Dynamic Haptics for VR with Furniture-moving Swarm Robots

Abstract

Figure 1. RoomShift is composed of a swarm of shape-changing robots for haptic feedback in VR. RoomShift robots move beneath a piece of furniture to lift, move and place it. Multiple robots move furniture to construct a physical haptic environment collectively. The corresponding virtual scene is shown, with a human silhouette added for a reference.

Haptic PIVOT

“…These devices collide with fingers and display interaction forces only if a contact occurs in the virtual environment. Examples include TouchMover [16], H-Wall [12], RoomShift [18], Snake Charmer [2], and Haptic-go-round [33]. The haptic proxies mounted on these devices can have certain shape and size discrepancies from the virtual counterpart, as studied by Tinguy et al [21].…”

“…encounter type haptics. However, this approach is either limited to scripted experiences or requires expensive and large machinery to position these proxies dynamically, such as robotic arms [2], moving platforms [18], or involves multiple human helpers [7]. While the fidelity of the provided haptic sensation is high, the most common limitations of this approach are the limited workspace and speed of actuation.…”

Hermits

“…By using a number of self-propelled actuated modules, researchers have investigated a way to configure the number of actuated pucks for information display [38], gestural interaction [37], haptic feedback [39], and education [57,24]. SUIs have also been employed for activating passive modules including assembling blocks for rendering haptic proxies [93], and moving furniture and walls for rendering room-scale VR space [75]. To enhance the capability of SUI with reconfigurable interactive functionalities, HERMITS augment SUI with passive mechanical transmission attachments, and investigates the a new research space For adding extra shape changing modality to SUIs, Suzuki et al have explored with ShapeBots [79] and RoomShift [75] to add linear actuation modules.…”

“…SUIs have also been employed for activating passive modules including assembling blocks for rendering haptic proxies [93], and moving furniture and walls for rendering room-scale VR space [75]. To enhance the capability of SUI with reconfigurable interactive functionalities, HERMITS augment SUI with passive mechanical transmission attachments, and investigates the a new research space For adding extra shape changing modality to SUIs, Suzuki et al have explored with ShapeBots [79] and RoomShift [75] to add linear actuation modules. While some of the mechanical shell prototypes presented in HERMITS overlap with the interaction modalities for shape changing SUIs, our novel contribution is the possibility for self-propelled interfaces (including SUIs) to selectively attach and detach to modules, enabling more flexible functionalities.…”

“…As for the docking procedure, each mechanical shell has predefined entry points for each robot to move-in and dock (Figure 12a), similar to RoomShift [75]. After the robot is in the docking position, the robot actuates the vertically moving pin upwards to make the robust connection to the slot of the shell (Figure 12b), then it can switch to the activation/interaction mode (Figure 12c).…”