Key points are not available for this paper at this time.
Current virtual environments rely heavily on audio and visual feedback as a form of sensory feedback 1. The degree of immersion can be increased by augmenting synthetic haptic feedback from the user interface. Most of the existing wearable haptic feedback systems use tactile stimulation by vibrating motors for haptic feedback which lack a compelling sense of immersion with force feedback23. e.g.in the case of pressing a button. This research addresses this issue with hardware architecture for kinesthetic force feedback. This research focuses on the design of a wearable soft robotic haptic feedback glove for force feedback in virtual environments. The glove provides a force feedback to the fingers while clicking a button in virtual environments. The glove design includes a soft exoskeleton actuated by Mckibben muscles which are controlled using a custom fluidic control board 4. The user's fingers are tracked using the infrared cameras. This tracking system provides the information for the position of the user's fingers. Based on this information, the soft glove is actuated to provide a haptic feedback. The Soft exoskeleton and actuation make the glove compliant, compact and unintimidating as compared to force feedback glove with rigid kinematic linkages. The glove design is inexpensive, mass-manufacturable and compatible to 90% of the U. S. population. The user could test the glove by playing the piano in virtual reality environment. The presence of audio, visual and haptic feedback makes the virtual reality environment highly immersive. The informal pilot study indicates that haptic glove improves the immersive experience of the virtual reality environments. Users in informal pilot study described the experience as "like nothing seen before", "mesmerizing" and "amazing".
Jadhav et al. (Sun,) studied this question.