Hand movement and posture reflected responsive force-based haptic feedback for immersive virtual underwater experience

Abstract

Several haptic rendering methods are emerging to give users a sense of presence and high immersion with the development of haptic interfaces, following the advent of virtual reality (VR). However, research on fluid-haptic interaction is less active due to the complexity and high-cost simulation. In this thesis, we propose a new multi-modal haptic rendering framework that implements responsive forces corresponding to the user's hand states in a simplified virtual underwater. Users can feel the water resistance with a drag force as tactile feedback according to the hand movement, and an added mass force as kinesthetic feedback depending on the hand posture. The pressure variation graphs that we suggested have a significant impact on feeling the water properties in human perception. Through this system, we confirm the improvement in user experience compared to the conventional rendering method which used a single tactile modality in application scenarios. It is expected to contribute to research on providing a high immersion in the experience of virtual fluid-related content.