Ring-shaped Haptic Device with Vibrotactile Feedback Patterns to Support Natural Spatial Interaction

Abstract

Haptic feedback devices can be used to improve usability, performance and cognition in immersive virtual environments (IVEs) and have the potential to significantly improve the user's virtual reality (VR) experience during natural interaction. However, there are only few affordable and reliable haptic devices that have a light-weight, unencumbering, simple and versatile form factor which does not prevent natural interaction with other objects or devices at the same time. In this paper we present such a ring-shaped wireless haptic feedback device, and we describe different vibrotactile signal patterns which can be used to provide proximity-based cues during 3D interaction with virtual objects. We present a usability study in which we evaluated the device and feedback patterns.