Roshan Lalintha Peiris

ThermoVR: Exploring Integrated Thermal Haptic Feedback with Head Mounted Displays

Head Mounted Displays (HMDs) provide a promising opportunity for providing haptic feedback on the head for an enhanced immersive experience. In ThermoVR, we integrated five thermal feedback modules on the HMD to provide thermal feedback directly onto the users face. We conducted evaluations with 15 participants using two approaches: Firstly, we provided simultaneously actuated thermal stimulations (hot and cold) as directional cues and evaluated the accuracy of recognition; secondly, we evaluated the overall immersive thermal experience that the users experience when provided with thermal feedback on the face. Results indicated that the recognition accuracy for cold stimuli were of approx. 89.5% accuracy while the accuracy for hot stimuli were 68.6%. Also, participants reported that they felt a higher level of immersion on the face when all modules were simultaneously stimulated (hot and cold). The presented applications demonstrate the ThermoVRs directional cueing and immersive experience.

Thermocons: Evaluating the Thermal Haptic Perception of the Forehead

Thermocons describes our work in progress for evaluating thermal haptic feedback on the forehead as a viable feedback modality for integration with head mounted devices. The purpose was to identify the thermal perception for simultaneous feedback at three locations of the forehead. We provided hot-only, cold-only and hot/cold-mixed thermal stimulations at these location to identify the sensitivity for accurate perception. Our evaluation with 9 participants indicated that perceiving cold-only stimulations were significantly better with an accuracy of 88%. The perception accuracy for hot-only and hot/cold-mixed stimulations were 66% and 65% respectively.

Exploration of cuing methods for localization of spatial cues using thermal haptic feedback on the forehead

Haptic feedback systems for spatial awareness are widely used in navigational and obstacle detection tasks and mostly used in combination with vibrotactile modules. As such, this work explores using thermal haptic feedback on the forehead for spatial awareness. As an initial step in this direction, our goal is to investigate the performance of different cueing methods for a minimal number of thermal elements. As such, the system uses three equally distributed peltier modules on the forehead to provide the thermal feedback. We investigated three different cuing methods with 30, 150 and 450 effective haptic feedback ranges. The results indicate that the 30 method to be the most precise (lowest error) while the 450 method to be the fastest for detecting the target.

HapticAid: Haptic Experiences System Using Mobile Platform

We developed HapticAid, which is a wearable haptic augmentation system. This system enhances the skin vibrations that occur during touch and provide them as haptic feedback on the wrist. We revised HapticAid to be wearable and mobile by using a mobile platform and installed a digital signal processing to control haptic feedback for haptic experiences. This paper describes the implementation of our system, design of digital signal processing the method of wearing our system for haptic experiences.

ThermoReality: thermally enriched head mounted displays for virtual reality

With rise in the popularity of virtual reality, head mounted displays (HMDs) have become a main piece of hardware that delivers an immersive experience to the user. As one of the approaches to further enhance the users presence in the virtual reality environment, haptic feedback has been widely used in the current VR space.

LiquidReality: Wetness Sensations on the Face for Virtual Reality

We present LiquidReality, a wearable system that simulates wetness sensations directly on the user’s face for immersive virtual reality applications. The LiquidReality system consists of a headmounted display integrated with thermal and vibrotactile modules that provides co-located haptic feedback with the displayed visuals. With this system, we conducted a preliminary study that evaluated nine types of thermal and thermal/vibrotactile stimuli to induce a wetness sensation on the user’s face. Our results indicate that thermal only stimuli and low frequency vibrotactile stimuli (combined with thermal) induced better wetness perception. Next, using the results from this preliminary study, we evaluated the immersion enhancement when using the LiquidReality system in combination with related visuals. The results indicate that using the LiquidReality system with related visuals, enhances the level of immersion for the user.

3D Printed Haptics: Creating Pneumatic Haptic Display Based on 3D Printed Airbags

In this paper, we provide a rapid fabrication method to create customizable pneumatic haptic displays using 3D printing technology. Based on the 3d printed miniature airbag which is built form a simple modeling process, various shapes of the haptic display can be made. Not only altering the shape of a single airbag to make a one-dimensional haptic display, but also combining multi airbags as spacial distributed to construct a multi DoF haptic display is possible. The 3D printed airbag is scalable, light to wear and waterproof. Each airbag is inflated by a full-range speaker which mounted on a closed air chamber where the air is transferred back and forth through a tiny nozzle to the airbag. So both low-frequency pressure and high-frequency vibration could be presented. Our technical evaluation identified that the airbag is capable of presenting a wide range of mechanical vibration from 2 Hz to 800 Hz. In addition, a user study was done to investigate the capability of rendering multi degree-of-freedom tactile sensation. The average accuracy of distinguishing directional information is over 80%.

HaptI/O: Physical I/O Node over the Internet

Along with the development of information technology and tactile technology, it has become possible to share human haptic experiences via the Internet. In this research, we propose HaptI/O a technology that allows easy sharing and communication of haptic experiences. HaptI/O devices are physical network nodes that can perform as gateways to both input or output the haptic information from a source such as the human body or a tangible object. HaptI/O proposed in this research focuses on the (1) ease of sharing haptic information with a focus on usability (2) share Haptic information among multiple users (3) usage of the HaptI/O as a mobile device. As a result of user testing of the implemented HaptI/O, it was confirmed that user’s information perception in remote communication was improved.

Ambient: Facial Thermal Feedback in Remotely Operated Applications

Facial thermoreception plays an important role in mediating surrounding ambient and direct feeling of temperature and touch, enhancing our subjective experience of presence. Such sensory modality has not been well explored in the field of Telepresence and Telexistence. We present Ambient, an enhanced experience of remote presence that consists of a fully facial thermal feedback system combined with the first person view of Telexistence systems. Here, we present an overview of the design and implementation of Ambient, along with scenarios envisioned for social and intimate applications.

Exploring of Simulating Passing through Feeling on the Wrist: Using Thermal Feedback

Wearable devices combining with VR/AR technology become a research hotspot these years. In some research, tactile displays are put on the skin and synchronized with VR/AR environment. Researchers try to use these display to simulate varied embodied feeling to enhance the immersion in the VR/AR environment. In the field of game entertainment, based on the scenario, sometimes the feeling of passing through the body need to be presented to the user. However this is physically impossible. Thus we make a exploration attempting to simulate this feeling by thermal feedback. Here we use two thermal modules bonding on the two side of the wrist( inside and outside). When we actuate two modules sequentially, user would perceive the stimuli and interpret this into a feeling of passing though. In the paper, we will introduce the interface and describe the experiment to determine the principle for thermo-tactile illusion of passing through.