Conception and Implementation of an virtual Reality application for the evaluation of different types of commercially available haptic gloves

Abstract

Immersion and presence are important aspects of virtual reality (VR). Efforts are therefore being made to enhance these effects in order to increase the impact of VR and its transferability to reality. This is particularly important in research areas such as medical education and psychology. The development of haptic gloves has therefore increased significantly in recent years. These are immersive input devices designed to make virtual objects tangible. However, the research field is still very new and there is insufficient research on their handling and effect. For this reason, an application was developed to compare different haptic data gloves with different haptic technologies. A glove with vibrotactile feedback (Manus Prime X Haptic VR) and a glove with additional force feedback (SenseGlove) were used and compared in multiple tasks. These include finger tracking and gesture recognition, as well as hand tracking and the behaviour of gloves when grasping objects with and without haptics. The aim is to determine how well the haptics could be integrated and which is more accepted by the test subjects. For this purpose, a questionnaire has been designed to evaluate the effect of the haptic gloves on users. It aims to get a first impression of the tactile gloves available on the market and to advance research in the area.