Applications for virtual reality (VR) may be made more user-friendly with a gentle, wireless, and battery-operated offering.
Virtual reality (VR) has been touted as the technology that would usher in a paradigm shift in the way that people interact with the world around them via various forms of media. However, the haptic devices that are used in VR have not yet been able to produce a seamless user interface that is pleasant to users and can fulfil that promise. Researchers from the City University of Hong Kong have developed a cutting-edge wireless haptic interface technology called WeTac. This might lead to a shift in this situation (CityU). According to Yu Xinge, Associate Professor, the Department of Biomedical Engineering, at CityU and leader of the research team, the technology has the potential to provide the kind of wireless interface that could function as a second skin and enable virtual reality to live up to its potential.
Xinge said on a CityU website post that virtual reality (VR) offers a lot of promise for using touch feedback in addition to visual and auditory cues, therefore he and his team continued working on making the haptic interface wireless, gentler, narrower, and more lightweight so that it could be worn naturally on the hand like some kind of second skin.
The researchers claim that the WeTac gadget, which consists of two parts, weighs just 19.2 grammes and is tiny enough (with dimensions of 5 cm x 5 cm x 2.1 mm) to be worn on the arm. The haptic interface consists of a hydrogel electrode hand patch with a thickness between 220 micrometres and 1 millimetre, and the control panel is a tiny soft driver unit connected to the forearm.
Currently, haptic gloves are used in VR applications to simulate touch, but they generally depend on large pumps and air ducts that are powered and managed by cords and wires. According to academics, this substantially restricts consumers’ ability to fully immerse themselves in VR and augmented reality (AR).
The researchers claim that the WeTac gadget, which consists of two parts, weighs just 19.2 grammes and is tiny enough (with dimensions of 5 cm x 5 cm x 2.1 mm) to be worn on the arm. The haptic interface consists of a hydrogel electrode hand patch with a thickness between 220 micrometres and 1 millimetre, and the control panel is a tiny soft driver unit connected to the forearm.
According to their results, the WeTac patches can provide customizable spatio-temporal feedback patterns using 32 electrotactile stimulation pixels located on the palm rather than the fingers. It was determined by measuring the distance from the centre of one electrode to the centre of the next electrode that this setup provides complete coverage for the hand.
WeTac is self-sufficient in that it combines Bluetooth low energy (BLE) for wireless communication and a tiny rechargeable lithium-ion battery to power itself, eliminating the need for an additional power source. Experts agree that the system is very adaptable and has the potential to offer users vital feedback as they experiment with new positions and movements.
