Handling of Virtual Contact in Immersive Virtual Environments: Beyond Visuals

This paper addresses the issue of improving the perception of contact that users make with purely virtual objects in virtual environments. Because these objects have no physical component, the user's perceptual understanding of the material properties of the object, and of the nature of the contact, is hindered, often limited solely to visual feedback. Many techniques for providing haptic feedback to compensate for the lack of touch in virtual environments have been proposed. These systems have increased our understanding of the nature of how humans perceive contact. However, providing effective, general-purpose haptic feedback solutions has proven elusive. We propose a more-holistic approach, incorporating feedback to several modalities in concert. This paper describes a prototype system we have developed for delivering vibrotactile feedback to the user. The system provides a low-cost, distributed, portable solution for incorporating vibrotactile feedback into various types of s...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2002
• Where: VR
• Authors: Robert W. Lindeman, James N. Templeman, John L. Sibert, Justin R. Cutler
• Keywords: Feedback, Virtual, Virtual Environments, Virtual Reality, VR 2002