Category: vr haptics

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This Pulsating ‘Haptic Skin’ is Somewhat Creepy, Mostly Awesome

Omnipulse is a new haptic technology out of Cornell’s Organic Robotics Lab which uses an array of embedded pneumatic actuators to create haptic feedback which feels quite ‘organic’ compared to the more ‘mechanical’ of many other haptic technologies out there. With the ability to form the flexible Omnipulse skin into arbitrary shapes, the technology could be integrated into VR controllers, gloves, or potentially even haptic VR suits.

Showing off their technology at GTC 2017 this week, the Organic Robotics Lab has been collaborating with NVIDIA to create compelling haptic feedback with a version of the Omnipulse skin which was adapted to a Vive controller. Running inside of Nvidia’s VR Funhouse demo, the lab showed the haptic system being used to convey sensations of gun recoil, hitting a hammer against objects, punching objects, and shooting a squirt gun.

The prototype haptic skin is shaped to conform to the controller and simply slides over top of the existing structure. From there it’s attached to a tether which, at this stage, contains one pneumatic tube per pulsating pocket (currently 12), though the creators tell me there are a number of ways to simplify the tether. The tether runs to a compressor which pressurizes air for use in inflating the various actuators; compressed gas like C02 could also be used for a system that wouldn’t need to rely on a powered compressor.

The sleeve itself feels like a piece of thick rubber, with a consistency similar to your own skin; combined with the roundness of the inflating pockets, the whole ordeal feels quite a bit more squishy and organic than many other haptics technologies we’ve used for VR. When you see it active on the controller when it isn’t in anyone’s hand, squirming and shaking the controller at times, it’s actually a little creepy how it seems… alive.

But that doesn’t mean it can only provide organic-feeling feedback. Actually the creators say it’s capable of applying a hearty 15 PSI against your hand (provided you keep a firm grip), which means it can push quite hard against your hand. I was surprised to find that the response time was fast enough to create a compelling feeling of the kick of a gun in my hand when I tried the demo.

When it comes to haptics, pneumatics are not new to the scene; we’ve seen it used in gun peripherals, haptic vests, and more in years past. What’s interesting about Omnipulse is the ability to integrate many pneumatic actuators within a tight space, and control them all independently from one another. This means more ‘haptic resolution’, and the ability to create more advanced haptic effects.

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The creators of Omnipulse tell me that this is a very early prototype, and what I saw and felt was just a preliminary set of haptic effects in one potential form factor. There’s still lots of exploration to do with regard to figuring out how to pulsate the actuator array in ways that create the most compelling haptic sensations that feel like a good analog for what the user is experiencing in VR. And further out, the company plans to experiment with different form factors, saying that the skins can be molded in arbitrary shapes, with the possibility to be made into gloves and even haptic suits.

Road to VR is a proud media sponsor of GTC 2017.

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Hands-on: Go Touch VR’s Haptic Feedback is So Simple You’ll Wonder Why You Didn’t Think of it First

Sometimes, the simplest solutions are also the smartest. Go Touch VR’s approach to VR haptics achieves surprising effectiveness out of small, simple haptic devices that provide stimulation to the end of your fingers.

Call it “obvious,” but this is the first time I’ve seen Go Touch VR’s approach to VR haptics, which provides nothing more than a variable force against the top of your fingertip using a flat piece of piece of plastic that moves back and forth with a little motor. Simple, and yet surprisingly compelling. The sensation is much like what you feel when you press your finger against a flat surface like a desk.

While oldschool ERM rumble (like you’ll find in today’s gamepads) and more modern linear-actuator based rumble (like you’ll find in VR motion controllers) both offer various rumbling sensations as an added dimension of feedback to users on top of visual and audio cues. And while sometimes that rumble can be interpreted as direct feedback (ie: vibration caused by shooting a gun leads your hand to rumble), often times the haptic sensation is a bit more abstract than that, like feeling a rumble when you press a button; but pressing a button doesn’t exactly cause your hand to ‘rumble’ in real life, and thus the rumble in this case is abstract rather than direct (ie: it requires a level of interpretation from your brain to make the connection between the information being conveyed and the sensation).

And while rumble is widely applicable for that abstract approach, it seems best suited for shooting games if you want to make use of the more immersive direct approach. And yet in VR we find lots of experiences where you aren’t shooting, but are instead grabbing, touching, and manipulating objects in VR which wouldn’t vibrate in real life, making it difficult to use rumble to convey meaningful, direct feedback.

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Photo by Road to VR

It’s that grabbing, touching, and manipulation where Go Touch VR’s ‘VR Touch‘ haptics hopes to excel. Based on what CEO Eric Vezzoli says is a ‘Real Contact Sensation’ haptic approach, VR Touch is a simple, compact device which straps to the end of your fingers and provides nothing more than a plastic pad which can exert varying levels of force against the top of your fingertip.

That force can create a surprisingly compelling sensation of touching and grabbing objects with your fingers. Rather than abstract rumble, VR Touch gives the illusion of objects pushing back against your fingers directly.

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For non-controller VR input solutions like hand tracking, VR Touch fills the significant need of informing the user when they have actually initiated a ‘grab’ of a virtual object; having something that is not your own fingers to push back against your fingers as an indication of contact turns out to be far more immersive than the ‘air grab’, where you create a grabbing gesture with your hand, but have no idea if you are making the ‘correct’ contact with the virtual object because there’s no real object providing feedback to your fingers. This issue presently plagues non-controller VR input, and it’s one that VR Touch is poised to solve.

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Photo by Road to VR

Demonstrating VR Touch haptics at SVVR 2017 this week, Go Touch VR showed the device in action using an Oculus Rift with attached Leap Motion for hand tracking. They placed three of the VR Touch units across my thumb, index, and middle fingers, secured with a small elastic band with velcro.

Through the series of demos, I found that the VR Touch haptics are great for things like pressing buttons and poking & grabbing objects.

Again, the key is providing useful feedback to indicate that your virtual fingers are interacting with the virtual objects. But it isn’t just useful; the sensation is a good stand-in for the forces you expect to feel and the places you expect to feel them. The direct nature of the feedback clicks instantly with your brain which expects to feel a force specifically against your fingertip whenever you touch something.

Among the demos I tried was an abstract usage of the feedback which attempted to convey the heat coming off of a small fire when I placed my hand over top of it. And while the feedback was useful from an informational standpoint (to tell me perhaps that the fire is dangerous), as you might expect, this use of the haptics was much less convincing because fire doesn’t actually push back against your hand.

I also tried using just one VR Touch unit instead of three, though I found that three was far more immersive.

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For how small the VR Touch device is, I was actually surprised how much force it can apply; it easily provides enough force in its current state to emulate the sensations as you’d expect them when touching and holding small objects.

That’s not to say the device is ready for market however. The prototype VR Touch units I saw were 3D printed and hand-built. Still, the team says they can already last for two hours on a single charge (and my guess is that there’s more progress to be made there as the device matures). After about 10 minutes of use, the elastic band securing the units to my fingers caused a reduction in circulation which I could easily feel once I took them off. CEO Eric Vezzoli tells me that the final model will fix this by using materials which provide greater friction between the contact points of the device along your finger, allowing it to rely less on the elastic band to keep the device in place (indeed, the current 3D printed plastic was very smooth and offered little friction).

He also says that the final VR Touch form-factor is expected to become significantly more compact, and will smartly include a few physical controls on the device as well, like buttons, to aid in interaction.

vr-touch-haptics-3Each unit is also planned to include its own IMU which can be fused with other tracking solutions to enhance the finger-level tracking necessary for VR Touch to work effectively. And while I saw VR Touch demoed using Leap Motion’s hand tracking, Vezzoli says the device can work across a number of tracking technologies, including integration into glove-based systems.

Go Touch VR is currently soliciting interested in dev kit pre-orders of the device and they are also actively fundraising to continue growing the company.

The post Hands-on: Go Touch VR’s Haptic Feedback is So Simple You’ll Wonder Why You Didn’t Think of it First appeared first on Road to VR.

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Hardlight VR $499 Haptic Suit Kickstarter Passes $80k Target

Hardlight VR is a new haptic suit from Nullspace VR that launched its Kickstarter last week. It’s already set to pass its original goal and the team have announced the project’s first stretch goal.

We wrote recently about Nullspace VR’s haptic suit project Hardlight VR and the team’s intent to bring the product to Kickstarter. Well, the company launched their campaign last week and it looks as if Hardlight VR will hit the original $80,000 target in under a week.

Hardlight VR is an upper-body vest containing 16 haptic pads that deliver impact feedback to your chest, back, arms and shoulders. The pads can be triggered by any software integrated with NullSpace VR’s APIs with relative rotational information for your body provided by integrated IMUs.

The company (as we mentioned in our last piece) have persuaded a number of VR developers, including recent Indie favourite Sairento VR, to add Hardlight Suit support. Joining that are 14 other games, including the likes of futuristic racer Redout and room-scale archery favourite Holopoint. The latest announcement for the project is the first stretch

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Early bird Hardlight VR units are already gone, but interested backers can still get their hands on a suit from $499. Note that Hardlight VR is currently tethered, with a USB cable attaching the suite to the PC providing both power and the input / output feed. The team claim that a wireless add-on is on the roadmap, should they reach the stretch goal.

However, if you can live with those, the team certainly have a large enough selection of software for you to sample on delivery. And, with the campaign’s goal met in under a week, it’ll be interesting to see how much more interest the project garners and how much more can be raised in the

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NullSpace VR’s New ‘Hardlight’ Haptic Suit is Heading to Kickstarter

NullSpace VR are poised to launch a new haptic vest focused toward immersive, virtual reality gaming, via Kickstarter soon. The Hardlight suit integrates 16 haptic pads that allow you to feel directional impact linked to actions inside the VR experience.

We’re all for amping up immersion on Road to VR, via whatever means necessary frankly. But our experiences in the world of wearable haptics as a mean to do so has not been exactly stellar so far. Nevertheless, the appeal of having directional, accurate force feedback which allows your chosen VR experience to punish you for your failures, or indeed merely give you a prod into action, is clear.

NullSpace VR, are poised to unleash their solution to this gap in the VR haptics market and they’re calling it the Hardlight Suit. This upper-body vest contains 16 haptic pads for delivering feedback to your chest, back, arms and shoulders. These pads can be triggered by any software integrated with NullSpace VR’s APIs and indeed, the company (who’ve made substantial progress since we first covered them) have persuaded a number of VR developers, including recent Indie favourite Sairento VR, to add Hardlight Suit support.

The team recently took their latest prototype to the World’s Fair ‘Nano’ event to show off their progress, filming attendee reaction for posterity.

The key concern for us is still the accuracy at which the suit can detect your orientation in relation to the virtual world. The Hardlight Suit contains inertial sensors, which detect rotational movement, but these sorts of sensors are not absolute and therefore can suffer from drift and positional inaccuracies. That said, since we first covered the suit, we now have room-scale capable positional tracking for both headsets and motion controllers, which adds more data to guess the user’s body orientation, but there are still gaps in that data which will need to be filled in order to be truly immersive.

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The vest has been cannily designed, with a simple, open design and adjustable straps which should allow the system to be worn by people of varying shapes and sizes.

The team are adding the finishing touched to their Kickstarter campaign as I write this and we’ll pass on more details on that once they go live. In the mean time, if you’ve gone hands on with the Hardlight Suit in the past, why not share your experiences in the comments section below.

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