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. 2017 May 17;17(5):1141.
doi: 10.3390/s17051141.

A Study on Immersion and Presence of a Portable Hand Haptic System for Immersive Virtual Reality

Mingyu Kim  1 , Changyu Jeon  2 , Jinmo Kim  3
Affiliations

A Study on Immersion and Presence of a Portable Hand Haptic System for Immersive Virtual Reality

Mingyu Kim et al. Sensors (Basel). .

Abstract

This paper proposes a portable hand haptic system using Leap Motion as a haptic interface that can be used in various virtual reality (VR) applications. The proposed hand haptic system was designed as an Arduino-based sensor architecture to enable a variety of tactile senses at low cost, and is also equipped with a portable wristband. As a haptic system designed for tactile feedback, the proposed system first identifies the left and right hands and then sends tactile senses (vibration and heat) to each fingertip (thumb and index finger). It is incorporated into a wearable band-type system, making its use easy and convenient. Next, hand motion is accurately captured using the sensor of the hand tracking system and is used for virtual object control, thus achieving interaction that enhances immersion. A VR application was designed with the purpose of testing the immersion and presence aspects of the proposed system. Lastly, technical and statistical tests were carried out to assess whether the proposed haptic system can provide a new immersive presence to users. According to the results of the presence questionnaire and the simulator sickness questionnaire, we confirmed that the proposed hand haptic system, in comparison to the existing interaction that uses only the hand tracking system, provided greater presence and a more immersive environment in the virtual reality.

Keywords: Arduino-based sensor; hand haptic system; immersion; immersive virtual reality; interaction; presence.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Overall structure and flow of this study.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Overall outline of the portable hand haptic system using Leap Motion.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Hardware configuration of Arduino-based portable hand haptic system.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Process of data transmission between virtual reality (VR) application and proposed hand haptic system. HMD: head mounted display.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Hand gesture recognition process of proposed hand haptic system.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Set of virtual reality (VR) application objects for vibrational tactile feedback response.
Figure 7
Figure 7
VR application hand gesture processing for heat tactile reaction .
Figure 8
Figure 8
Process flow of VR application for proposed hand haptic system.
Figure 9
Figure 9
Proposed VR application design results: (a) virtual scene for vibration sensor; (b) virtual scene for heat sensor.
Figure 10
Figure 10
Physical feedback response results through interaction between proposed portable hand haptic system and VR application: (a) vibration after touch; (b) expression of heat through light emitting diode (LED).
Figure 11
Figure 11
Experiment environment with general users as targets.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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