At ACM CHI 2016, a top conference for Human-Computer Interaction, Microsoft Research is presenting a new paper on a technique called haptic retargeting. In general, manipulating a virtual object with appropriate passive haptic cues provides a satisfying sense of presence in virtual reality. However, supporting multiple virtual objects is a challenge as each one needs to be accompanied with a precisely-located haptic proxy object.

Microsoft Research is proposing haptic retargeting that overcomes this limitation by leveraging the dominance of vision when our senses conflict.

Microsoft writes:

Manipulating a virtual object with appropriate passive haptic cues provides a satisfying sense of presence in virtual reality. However, scaling such experiences to support multiple virtual objects is a challenge as each one needs to be accompanied with a precisely-located haptic proxy object. We propose a solution that overcomes this limitation by hacking human perception. We have created a framework for repurposing passive haptics, called haptic retargeting, that leverages the dominance of vision when our senses conflict. With haptic retargeting, a single physical prop can provide passive haptics for multiple virtual objects. We introduce three approaches for dynamically aligning physical and virtual objects: world manipulation, body manipulation and a hybrid technique which combines both world and body manipulation. Our study results indicate that all our haptic retargeting techniques improve the sense of presence when compared to typical wand-based 3D control of virtual objects. Furthermore, our hybrid haptic retargeting achieved the highest satisfaction and presence scores while limiting the visible side effects during interaction.

Check out the video demo above and visit ACM for more details about this paper.

(Previously posted with teaser video.)