Virtual Touch

What if we could touch touch walls, sit on chairs, and other objects in virtual reality ?

Current haptic solutions originated in robotic teleoperation, where the goal is to improve the performance of remote manipulations. Kinesthetic devices are usually grounded robotic arms or exoskeletons. They can display forces and motions through a point by stimulating receptors located in the joints, muscles, and tendons. However, they have small working volumes (< 1m3) and do not allow direct perception of surfaces with hands.

This research aims to advance haptics for room-scale virtual environments. Starting from fundamental perception research we will proceed through technology engineering and design. Our goal is to design and create robots that can cooperate seamlessly humans within VR spaces.

Team:

Wallace Lages, Alex Leonessa, Nanlin Sun, Sara Saghafi, Minh Tran, Aman Mathur and Phat Nguyen

This work has been partially supported by an Virginia Tech ICAT grant.