A multidirectional haptic feedback prototype for experiencing collisions between virtual and real objects

Haptic feedback has shown its great value in HCI research and applications for enhancing user experiences. Simulating people's tactile sensations of virtual objects is currently a primary research target. Different from wearing motors on fingers or hands, we attached vibration motors on a physical object to simulate the augmented sense of collision with virtual objects to bare hands. We developed a novel sensor-based proof-of-concept prototype that distributes multiple vibration motors around a physical object and provides vibrational sensations from the collision direction through combinations of motors. Users can obtain augmented haptic feedback when manipulating the augmented physical object to interact with virtual objects in an AR environment. We first studied the influence of the number and input voltage of motors for a correct judgment of different directions to identify the design parameters of the prototype. Then we investigated the effect of introducing the prototype in a typical manipulation task in AR. We found the prototype was efficient for enhancing human performance and collision experience with virtual objects together with visual feedback.