Multimodal Haptic Rendering for Interactive VR Sports Applications

Minjae Mun, Seungjae Oh, Chaeyong Park, Seungmoon Choi

http://doi.org/10.5626/JOK.2022.49.2.97

This study explores how to deliver realistic haptic sensations for virtual collision events in virtual reality (VR). For this purpose, we implemented a multifaceted haptic device that produced both vibration and impact and designed a haptic rendering method combining the simulated interactions of a physics engine and the collision data of real objects. We also designed a virtual simulation of three sports activities, billiards, ping-pong, and tennis, in which a user could interact with virtual objects having different material properties. We performed a user study to evaluate the subjective quality of the haptic feedback from three rendering conditions, vibration, impact, and multimodal of combining both, and compared it to real haptic sensations. The results suggested that each rendering condition had different perceptual characteristics. Therefore, the addition of a haptic modality can broaden the dynamic range of virtual collisions.