WAL: Wearable Based on Active Lubrication for Virtual Reality
摘要
Kinesthetic wearables that allow freedom of movement and diversified gestures with various haptic feedback in virtual reality and that are affordable for the public are still lacking. Indeed, existing wearables tend to rely on expensive actuators or lack diversified and tunable haptic feedback, or may be complex to implement. Thus, we propose a wearable for the hand using a new haptic brake based on active lubrication. It enables force modulation up to 3.15 N and tunable vibrotactile feedback from 1 Hz to 100 Hz through a unique passive actuator, while being light, low cost and safe. To assess the possibility of providing diversified and tunable feedback, we conducted a user study with 12 participants. The results showed that different vibrotactile patterns could be potentially recognized and that three absolute levels of force could be easily identified.