Air-jet button effects in AR

Abstract

Providing haptic cues can generate increased levels of presence in users as they interact with tangible objects. In this paper, we present button effects delivered by air-jet displays with the aim of providing click-like sensations when virtual buttons in an AR environment are pressed. We derive the profile of the haptic output by measuring the force profile of real physical buttons. To validate our concept, we have built an AR system featuring a cellular phone model which users can tangibly manipulate through a physical AR marker object. When users press a button on the model, they experience a corresponding click-like feeling at their fingertip. In this way, our system enables users to press a button on an AR model and experience a force profile generated by our pneumatic array directly derived from the act of pushing a button in the real world. Keywords: Air-jet, button effect, AR, fingertip point extraction. © 2006 Springer-Verlag Berlin/Heidelberg.