Comparing Different Visuo-Haptic Environments for Virtual Prototyping Applications

Abstract

The use of haptic devices in Virtual Reality applications makes the interaction with the digital objects easier, by involving the sense of touch in the simulation. The most widespread devices are stylus-based, so the user interacts with the virtual world via either a tool or a stylus. These kinds of devices have been effectively used in several virtual prototyping applications, in order to allow the users to easily interact with the digital model of a product. Among the several open issues related to these applications, there is the choice of the set-up and of the techniques adopted to combine the visual and the haptic stimuli. This paper presents the comparison of three different solutions specifically studied for virtual prototyping applications and in particular for usability assessment. The first is a simple desktop configuration where the user looks at a screen, and visual and haptic stimuli are presented in a de-located manner. The second is a HMD based set-up where the user has a more natural first-person immersive interaction. The third requires a video-see-trough HMD in order to augment the virtual scene with the visualization of the real user’s hand. The test realized with the users on these three different setups have been finalized to study the effect of two different factors that are crucial for the effectiveness and the user-friendliness of the interaction. One is the perception of the visual and haptic stimuli in a collocated manner; the other is the visualization of his/her own hand during the interaction with the virtual product.

Mixed reality in design prototyping: A systematic review

“…Found Papers Initial Papers (Park et al, 2009;Verlinden et al, 2003) Citation Traversal Aromaa and Väänänen, 2016;Barbieri et al, 2013;Bordegoni, Polistina, et al, 2010;Bruno et al, 2012;Bruno et al, 2011;Faust et al, 2018;Huang et al, 2012;Kim and Nam, 2015;Lee et al, 2011;Lee et al, 2009;Lin et al, 2019;Park and Moon, 2013;Simon et al, 2012) Keyword Search (Arrighi and Mougenot, 2019;Fröhlich et al, 2018;Funk et al, 2014;He et al, 2019;Heun et al, 2013;Ibanez et al, 2015;Kelly et al, 2018;Lucas et al, 2018;Maurya et al, 2018;Mora et al, 2016;Peng et al, 2018;Zhang and Kwok, 2018) From the first corpus of 30 papers, 72 augmentation labels were defined. After familiarisation, labels were grouped into like categories as part of the thematic analysis process described in Section 2.3, leading to the dimensions of value shown in Section 3.3.…”

Gut microbiota influences foraging onset without affecting division of labor and associated physiological hallmarks in honeybees

“…There was no significant difference in fresh weight (whole body and gut only) between MD bees and any of the differently colonized bees at seven days of age (Fig. 3A and B; linear mixed effects models fitted by REML with colony of origin and cage as nested random effects: n=548, body weight, F (3,41) =0.94, P =0.43, gut weight, F (3,41) =0.22, P =0.88). We also measured HP gland size from a subset of the bees (n=28) which were used in brain and gut RNA-sequencing.…”

“…Each sub-colony could freely move between a nest-box (30 ° C, 70% RH in constant darkness) and a foraging arena subject to cycles of light, temperature and humidity mirroring the external environment. The position and orientation of each bee in each sub-colony was tracked by a pair of camera systems using unique matrix barcodes (ARTag library; (41)) attached to the bees’ thoraces. Bees were tracked for a week, starting three days after adult emergence and treatment inoculation, so that the gut microbiota would have fully established (27, 42).…”

Social network position is a major predictor of ant behavior, microbiota composition, and brain gene expression

“…The colonies were housed in double-chamber setups, with a nest box (170 × 123 mm) kept in constant darkness connected via a plastic tube (internal diameter 19 mm) to a foraging arena (170 × 123 mm) under a 12-h/12-h light/dark cycle. Unique 1.4 mm 2 matrix barcodes from the ARTag library [ 36 ] were fixed to the thorax of each ant using SAUER skin adhesive ( Fig 1 ). These tags weigh a fraction of what ants can carry, and their presence does not alter behavior [ 37 ].…”