HapTip: Displaying Haptic Shear Forces at the Fingertips for Multi-Finger Interaction in Virtual Environments

Abstract

The fingertips are one of the most important and sensitive parts of our body. They are the first stimulated areas of the hand when we interact with our environment. Providing haptic feedback to the fingertips in virtual reality could, thus, drastically improve perception and interaction with virtual environments. In this paper, we present a modular approach called HapTip to display such haptic sensations at the level of the fingertips. This approach relies on a wearable and compact haptic device able to simulate 2 Degree of Freedom (DoF) shear forces on the fingertip with a displacement range of ±2 mm. Several modules can be added and used jointly in order to address multi-finger and/or bimanual scenarios in virtual environments. For that purpose, we introduce several haptic rendering techniques to cover different cases of 3D interaction, such as touching a rough virtual surface, or feeling the inertia or weight of a virtual object. In order to illustrate the possibilities offered by HapTip, we provide four use cases focused on touching or grasping virtual objects. To validate the efficiency of our approach, we also conducted experiments to assess the tactile perception obtained with HapTip. Our results show that participants can successfully discriminate the directions of the 2 DoF stimulation of our haptic device. We found also that participants could well perceive different weights of virtual objects simulated using two HapTip devices. We believe that HapTip could be used in numerous applications in virtual reality for which 3D manipulation and tactile sensations are often crucial, such as in virtual prototyping or virtual training.

Hand-to-hand: an intermanual illusion of movement

“…Within human-computer interaction, there are numerous examples of tactile devices, each one focused on different aspects of touch, such as: the Maglev levitation haptic interface [2], applying a 6 DOF feedback force; the HapTip [6] and the Skin Stretch Haptic Device [4], using shear force; the Dexmo exoskeleton [7], interacting with the kinesthetic of the hand; and the UltraHaptics mid-air haptic device [3], which employs high frequency mid-air vibrations to create touchless interaction.…”

Toward Haptic Communication: Tactile Alphabets Based on Fingertip Skin Stretch

“…More specifically, we aim to stimulate fingertips as they are one of the most sensitive part of the body. To achieve this objective, we use a tactile device called "HapTip" [14]. This device stimulates the fingertip using a tactor corresponding to a plastic cap moving in the horizontal plane thanks to two miniature DC motors (see Figure 1).…”

Studying One and Two-Finger Perception of Tactile Directional Cues

“…The experimental setup is based on a tactile device called Haptip and presented in [3] (see Figure 1a). It stimulates fingertips through the 2D displacement of a tactor.…”