OrbitStick: A Hand-Held Haptic Impact Display with Mass Shifting Mechanism

초록

As virtual reality technology has become popularized, there is a growing need for realistic tactile sensations for interaction with virtual environments. Among various haptic sensations, haptic impact plays a vital role in delivering a realistic experience in virtual reality. Rendering a realistic haptic impact is intended to address issues of portability and realism. To achieve haptic impact by addressing both issues, we propose a novel hand-held haptic display, OrbitStick, that generates 2-DOF haptic impact. It can simulate haptic impact by abruptly shifting the direction of mass motion, creating the perceived sensation of an impact. We evaluated the efficacy of the proposed haptic system in four criteria: i) impact rendering by the change of motion velocity; ii) uniformity of impact by posture; iii) direction and magnitude rendering of a haptic impact; and iv) realism and immersiveness of haptic impact. Experiment 1 tested whether a human subject perceives a haptic motion whose motion direction changes as a single impact. The effect of grip posture was also tested. The results indicate that the participant perceived most experimental stimuli as a single haptic impact. Experiment 2 tested whether the proposed haptic system could render the direction and magnitude of haptic impact, and the results indicate that participants successfully identified the stimuli. In Experiment 3, the realism and immersiveness of a haptic impact rendered by the proposed system were compared to those generated by a conventional controller. The results indicate the haptic impact rendered by OrbitStick had higher scores for realism and immersiveness. © 2013 IEEE.

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