Instead, haptics sensations are applied to the person’s forearm. Hiroyuki Kajimoto, he has developed a new approach to VR haptics that sidesteps the need for hardware on a user’s hands. “After experiencing VR in stores, amusement centers, and at friends’ houses, I thought it would be more impressive if I could actually touch and interact with VR objects,” explains Moriyama, who has been studying ways to incorporate haptics into VR ever since. He has been captivated by the various VR systems such as HTC’s Vive, Oculus, and PlayStation VR since the products first hit the market. Taha Moriyama is a researcher at the University of Electro-Communications, in Chofu, Japan. This is especially true if the aim is to create physical sensations with multiple degrees of freedom (whereby sensations have different strengths and directions of force), because hardware would be needed to nudge the user’s hands from multiple angles. One challenge around simulating physical touch, however, is the bulky hardware worn on the hands to emulate the sensations. For example, many groups have been searching for ways to incorporate touch sensation into VR.
Virtual-reality headsets allow people to immerse themselves in a completely different environment, but some researchers are interested in expanding these fantasy worlds beyond just visual and acoustic sensations. This article is part of our exclusive IEEE Journal Watch series in partnership with IEEE Xplore.
