Weight Perception in VR Intern

Virtual Reality has revolutionized various industries, from gaming to healthcare, and now it is making its mark on training and education.
VR training solutions offer a realistic and immersive environment that allows trainees to practice their skills, make decisions, and learn from their mistakes in a safe and controlled environment. While visual and auditory stimuli play a significant role in creating a realistic VR experience, the sense of touch cannot be overlooked.

Haptic technologies provide tactile sensations, i.e., sensory information from the mechanoreceptors of the skin, allowing users to feel and interact with virtual objects. The company Senseglove (Delft, the Netherlands) offers vibrotactile and finger force feedback during VR interactions with objects to create a rich environment for VR training. However, users face difficulties comprehending the weight of virtual objects with only visual information. While rendering the weight of virtual objects with grounded robotic devices has been shown to be reliable in numerous previous works, it remains a challenge for wearable and handheld devices, such as those developed at Senseglove.

This project aims to extend the haptic feedback solutions from Senseglove to enable more realistic training scenarios by rendering the weight of interactable VR objects with a handheld or wearable device.
We intend for the VR user to feel the weight of a virtual object through a visuo-haptic illusion with feedback focusing on the transient behavior of the interaction, i.e., simulating changes in the forces acting on the user, but not simulating the continuous weight. The novelty of VR weight simulation in a convenient form-factor and wearable manner would enhance the overall experience of VR interactions, specifically VR training.