Retargeted Self-Haptics for Increased Immersion in VR without Hand Instrumentation

Retargeted Self-Haptics for Increased Immersion in VR without Hand Instrumentation Cathy Mengying Fang, Chris Harrison UIST’21: ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology Session: Haptics Abstract Today’s consumer virtual reality (VR) systems offer immersive graphics and audio, but haptic feedback is rudimentary – delivered through controllers with vibration feedback or is non-existent (i.e., the hands operating freely in the air). In this paper, we explore an alternative, highly mobile and controller-free approach to haptics, where VR applications utilize the user’s own body to provide physical feedback. To achieve this, we warp (retarget) the locations of a user’s hands such that one hand serves as a physical surface or prop for the other hand. For example, a hand holding a virtual nail can serve as a physical backstop for a hand that is virtually hammering, providing a sense of impact in an air-borne and uninstrumented experience. To illustrate this rich design space, we implemented twelve