Stuff being spiders and raindrops—not kisses.
If virtual reality is supposed to ultimately mimic our current reality, then touch is an important sense to address. Haptics research—research around tech that can integrate this feeling of touch—has been a hot topic among virtual- and augmented reality-focused companiesNow, researchers from the Future Interfaces Group at Carnegie Mellon University have developed an add-on mouth haptics device that can be attached to the bottom of a VR headset.
They tried out combinations of these to animate basic effects, and used the strongest and most compelling ones to build their animation library that includes the basic haptic commands for different motions. These included actions like swipes in x, y and z directions, “because any sort of movement on the lips is a very interesting effect that can go very well with a bunch of types of VR animation,” says Shen.
Before it was debuted, the team demoed the device on a small group of participants. As part of this demo, users were asked to go through a haunted forest scene, a real world object simulator, and a racing game, based on popular categories of VR applications. Users, as they went through the virtual worlds, could feel spiders crawl across, rain drop pattering, mud splashing, and water fountains bubbling across their lips. The feel of the scenes was constructed with code .