Wireless, ultrathin 'skin VR' to provide a vivid, personalized touch experience in the virtual world - Tech Xplore

Enhancing the virtual acquisition with the interaction sensation has go a blistery topic, but today's haptic devices stay typically bulky and tangled with wires. A squad led by the City University of Hong Kong (CityU) researchers precocious developed an precocious wireless haptic interface system, called WeTac, worn connected the hand, which has soft, ultrathin brushed features, and collects personalized tactile sensation information to supply a vivid interaction acquisition successful the metaverse.

The strategy has exertion imaginable successful gaming, sports and skills training, societal activities, and distant robotic controls. "Touch feedback has large potential, on with ocular and audial information, successful virtual reality (VR), truthful we kept trying to marque the haptic interface thinner, softer, much compact and wireless, truthful that it could beryllium freely utilized connected the hand, similar a 2nd skin," said Dr. Yu Xinge, Associate Professor successful the Department of Biomedical Engineering (BME) astatine CityU, who led the research.

Together with Professor Li Wenjung, Chair Professor successful the Department of Mechanical Engineering (MNE), Dr. Wang Lidai, Associate Professor successful the Department of Biomedical Engineering (BME) and different collaborators, Dr. Yu's squad developed WeTac, an ultra-flexible, wireless, integrated tegument VR system. The probe findings were published successful Nature Machine Intelligence.

An ultrathin, wireless “Skin VR”, developed by a squad led by researchers astatine City University of Hong Kong and collaborators, provides a vivid and “personalized” interaction acquisition successful the virtual world. Credit: Dr Yu Xinge's probe radical / City University of Hong Kong

Light-weight, wireless, wearable manus spot alternatively of bulky gloves

Existing haptic gloves trust mostly connected bulky pumps and aerial ducts, powered and controlled done a clump of cords and cables, which severely hinder the immersive acquisition of VR and augmented world (AR) users. The recently developed WeTac overcomes these shortcomings with its soft, ultrathin, skin-integrated wireless electrotactile system.

The strategy comprises 2 parts: a miniaturized brushed operator unit, attached to the forearm arsenic a power panel, and hydrogel-based electrode manus spot arsenic a haptic interface.

The full operator portion weighs lone 19.2g and is tiny (5cm x 5cm x 2.1mm) capable to beryllium mounted connected the arm. It uses Bluetooth debased vigor (BLE) wireless connection and a tiny rechargeable lithium-ion battery. The manus spot is lone 220 µm to 1mm thick, with electrodes connected the palm. It exhibits large flexibility and guarantees effectual feedback successful assorted poses and gestures.

High pixel-density instrumentality provides a personalized experience

"Electrotactile stimulation is simply a bully method to supply effectual virtual interaction for users," Dr. Yu explained. "However, arsenic individuals person antithetic sensitivities, the aforesaid feedback spot mightiness beryllium felt otherwise successful antithetic users' hands. So we request to customize the feedback parameters accordingly to supply a cosmopolitan instrumentality for each users to destruct different large bottleneck successful the existent haptic technology."

The ultra-soft diagnostic of WeTac allows the threshold currents to beryllium easy mapped for idiosyncratic users to find the optimized parameters for each portion of the hand. Based connected the personalized threshold data, electrotactile feedback tin beryllium delivered to immoderate portion of the manus connected request successful a due strength scope to debar causing symptom oregon being excessively anemic to beryllium felt. In this way, virtual tactile information, including spatial and temporal sequences, tin beryllium faithfully reproduced implicit the full hand.

The WeTac patches are worn connected the hands to supply programmable spatio-temporal feedback patterns, with 32 electrotactile stimulation pixels connected the thenar alternatively of the fingertips only. The mean center-to-center region betwixt the electrodes is astir 13mm, providing wide sum implicit the full hand.

The instrumentality has respective built-in information measures to support users from electric shock, and the somesthesia of the instrumentality is maintained successful a comparatively debased scope of 27 to 35.5°C to debar causing immoderate thermal discomfort during continuous operation.

Wide scope of imaginable applications

WeTac has been successfully integrated into VR and AR scenarios, and synchronized with robotic hands done BLE communication. With the miniature size, wearable and wireless format, and sensitivity-oriented feedback strategy, WeTac makes tactile feedback successful the manus overmuch easier and user-friendly. Users tin consciousness virtual objects successful antithetic scenarios, specified arsenic grasping a tennis shot successful sports training, touching a cactus, oregon feeling a rodent moving connected the manus successful societal activities, virtual gaming, etc.

"We judge that this is simply a almighty instrumentality for providing virtual touching, and is inspiring for the improvement of the metaverse, human-machine interface (HMI), and different fields," said Dr. Yu.