HapticPilot🚀

Authoring In-situ Hand Posture-Adaptive Vibrotactile Feedback for Virtual Reality

Youjin Sung1, Rachel Kim1, Kun Woo Song1, Yitian Shao2, Sang Ho Yoon1
(1)KAIST     (2)HITSZ
IMWUT 2024 (Ubicomp/ISWC 2024)
Paper (29.2 MB) Low-res Paper (654 KB) Supplementary Material

🔎 HapticPilot revolutionizes VR haptic design with an intuitive authoring tool that ensures consistent vibrotactile feedback across various hand postures.
Using a posture-adaptive algorithm and phantom grid abstraction, designers can easily customize and experience dynamic haptic sensations in real time, unlocking immersive and personalized VR interactions.

Abstract

The emergence of vibrotactile feedback in hand wearables enables immersive virtual reality (VR) experience with whole-hand haptic rendering. However, existing haptic rendering neglects inconsistent sensations caused by hand postures. In our study, we observed that changing hand postures alters the distribution of vibrotactile signals which might degrade one's haptic perception. To address the issues, we present HapticPilot which allows an in-situ haptic experience design for hand wearables in VR. We developed an in-situ authoring system supporting instant haptic design. In the authoring tool, we applied our posture-adaptive haptic rendering algorithm with a novel haptic design abstraction called phantom grid. The algorithm adapts phantom grid to the target posture and incorporates 1D & 2D phantom sensation with a unique actuator arrangement to provide a whole-hand experience. With this method, HapticPilot provides a consistent haptic experience across various hand postures is available. Through measuring perceptual haptic performance and collecting qualitative feedback, we validated the usability of the system. In the end, we demonstrated our system with prospective VR scenarios showing how it enables an intuitive, empowering, and responsive haptic authoring framework.

Core Contributions

In-situ VR Design

  • In-situ Haptic Design Tool: Supported real-time sketching, customization, and playback directly within VR environments.

    • Whole hand Haptic Rendering

  • Phanthom Grid: a novel spatial representation for adaptive haptic rendering across hand postures.
  • Integrated 1D & 2D Phantom Sensation: Enabled seamless vibrotactile experiences over the entire hand.
  • Posture-Adaptive Algorithm: Automated adjustment of haptic designs for different hand postures, reducing iterative workload for designers.

    • Normal and Anomalous Representations

    Posture-Adaptive Algorithm?

  • Phantom Grid Construction: Constructs a dynamic grid based on hand structure and actuator placement, ensuring precise feedback adaptation.
  • 1D & 2D Phantom Sensations: Generates tactile illusions through selective actuator activation for realistic whole-hand sensations.
  • Posture-Adaptive Haptic Rendering: Automatically adjusts vibrotactile patterns to maintain consistency across various hand configurations.


    • In-situ Haptic Design Tool?

  • User Centric Interface: Empowers intuitive haptic design with interactive sketching tools and real-time haptic feedback preview in VR.


    • Video Presentation

    BibTeX

    
        @article{10.1145/3631453,
          author = {Sung, Youjin and Kim, Rachel and Song, Kun Woo and Shao, Yitian and Yoon, Sang Ho},
          title = {HapticPilot: Authoring In-situ Hand Posture-Adaptive Vibrotactile Feedback for Virtual Reality},
          year = {2024},
          issue_date = {December 2023},
          publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
          address = {New York, NY, USA},
          volume = {7},
          number = {4},
          url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3631453},
          doi = {10.1145/3631453},
          abstract = {The emergence of vibrotactile feedback in hand wearables enables immersive virtual reality (VR) experience with whole-hand haptic rendering. However, existing haptic rendering neglects inconsistent sensations caused by hand postures. In our study, we observed that changing hand postures alters the distribution of vibrotactile signals which might degrade one's haptic perception. To address the issues, we present HapticPilot which allows an in-situ haptic experience design for hand wearables in VR. We developed an in-situ authoring system supporting instant haptic design. In the authoring tool, we applied our posture-adaptive haptic rendering algorithm with a novel haptic design abstraction called phantom grid. The algorithm adapts phantom grid to the target posture and incorporates 1D \& 2D phantom sensation with a unique actuator arrangement to provide a whole-hand experience. With this method, HapticPilot provides a consistent haptic experience across various hand postures is available. Through measuring perceptual haptic performance and collecting qualitative feedback, we validated the usability of the system. In the end, we demonstrated our system with prospective VR scenarios showing how it enables an intuitive, empowering, and responsive haptic authoring framework.},
          journal = {Proc. ACM Interact. Mob. Wearable Ubiquitous Technol.},
          month = jan,
          articleno = {179},
          numpages = {28},
          keywords = {haptic design authoring tool, haptic experience, phantom grid, posture-adaptive algorithm}
          }