Forum Discussion
Haptic: A Potential Solution
Hello,
After watching Michael Abrash's OC2 keynote, my mind has been endlessly imagining solutions to these haptic problems both in the short and long term. I wanted to present these ideas in case they might be useful.
TOUCH
In short, my solution to touch would involve 2 mechanics: soft touch and hard touch.
Now the absolute/perfect solution to touch is none other than direct neural stimulation but that is far into the future right now. We know that the short term will require some actual object to interface with. But props, morphing material, wind, and other clunky devices simply won't be streamlined enough to hit a consumer market. There's too much setup involved and don't account for freedom of movement/walking. I believe the simplest we can get right now, as far as setup, is something like a body suit.
Benefits:
Just like Oculus Touch would be an accessory for certain game types, so too, people can buy different sizes of jump suits to fit their body type if they wanna go hardcore into immersion. Now as for the actual nature of this suit. Rather than using external forces, the suit generates pressure from itself using a sort of body-to-suit isometrics duality.
SOFT TOUCH:
For soft touch, the suit will have hundreds of rings inside the fabric, and each of these rings will be made of a material that can contract when given an electric current. So for example, if you reach your fingers out to touch another person's hand, where your hand meets theirs, the rings would contract at 360 degrees around your fingers and cause you to feel the pressure. All of these rings would each have a very thin wire which signals on/off, and all these wires would come together someplace such as your lower back where you'd have a light battery pack.
HARD TOUCH:
For hard touch, the suit itself will have another set of stands running parallel to the rings. These strands would be able to change from a flexible to a rigid shape (perhaps chemically). So for example, your hand is reaching out to touch a wall in VR, and upon contact, the strands in your arm will harden so that you can't continue extending your elbow toward the wall. In essence, it stops you by using your own body, rather than outside forces. It works as a sort of anti-muscular-system that is positioned at all of your joints.
At the same time you'd have the soft-touch rings contracting at your fingertips, making it feel like you really have touched a wall.
This approach would take researching into materials, elasticity, chemicals, and the like, but I think it can be done within the next few years. If an electric current can make an elastic material more rigid, then we have all the pieces we need for this solution.
What do you guys think?
After watching Michael Abrash's OC2 keynote, my mind has been endlessly imagining solutions to these haptic problems both in the short and long term. I wanted to present these ideas in case they might be useful.
TOUCH
In short, my solution to touch would involve 2 mechanics: soft touch and hard touch.
- Soft Touch: Would be the ability to feel someone passing their finger along your forearm, or placing their palm gently on your chest.
- Hard Touch: Would be the ability to prevent your hand from slipping through a wall/table or solid object in VR. In other words, significant force applied against you.
Now the absolute/perfect solution to touch is none other than direct neural stimulation but that is far into the future right now. We know that the short term will require some actual object to interface with. But props, morphing material, wind, and other clunky devices simply won't be streamlined enough to hit a consumer market. There's too much setup involved and don't account for freedom of movement/walking. I believe the simplest we can get right now, as far as setup, is something like a body suit.
Benefits:
- No tethering (complete freedom of movement)
- Lightweight
- Ease of use (just put it on)
Just like Oculus Touch would be an accessory for certain game types, so too, people can buy different sizes of jump suits to fit their body type if they wanna go hardcore into immersion. Now as for the actual nature of this suit. Rather than using external forces, the suit generates pressure from itself using a sort of body-to-suit isometrics duality.
SOFT TOUCH:
For soft touch, the suit will have hundreds of rings inside the fabric, and each of these rings will be made of a material that can contract when given an electric current. So for example, if you reach your fingers out to touch another person's hand, where your hand meets theirs, the rings would contract at 360 degrees around your fingers and cause you to feel the pressure. All of these rings would each have a very thin wire which signals on/off, and all these wires would come together someplace such as your lower back where you'd have a light battery pack.
HARD TOUCH:
For hard touch, the suit itself will have another set of stands running parallel to the rings. These strands would be able to change from a flexible to a rigid shape (perhaps chemically). So for example, your hand is reaching out to touch a wall in VR, and upon contact, the strands in your arm will harden so that you can't continue extending your elbow toward the wall. In essence, it stops you by using your own body, rather than outside forces. It works as a sort of anti-muscular-system that is positioned at all of your joints.
At the same time you'd have the soft-touch rings contracting at your fingertips, making it feel like you really have touched a wall.
This approach would take researching into materials, elasticity, chemicals, and the like, but I think it can be done within the next few years. If an electric current can make an elastic material more rigid, then we have all the pieces we need for this solution.
What do you guys think?
11 Replies
- Those suits are awesome! :) Gosh, once I have the money....
But yeah, that's essentially the basics of it. A suit that tracks your whole body in 3D, and which also gives you soft touch. Apparently that part is already figured out.
Now, to flesh out some of the details of the hard touch concept --- and putting aside the technical hurdles for a moment --- I think the following would be several functional use-cases.
Holding an object
Unlike a wall, which is fixed in some 3D space, an object can be carried around. The way we'd do this is by preventing the fingers from making a fist by exerting anti-force against the fingers only, while leaving the elbow and all other body parts loose.
It would really feel like there's something in your hand and with more advanced algorithms, we could even simulate the level of solidity of the object. For example, a teddy bear would be felt in your hand but still be squishable to a degree. The anti-force would be lenient up to a certain extent before it applied full force against you. This also means the anti-force would have to dynamically adapt its level of force depending on how strongly you pushed first.
Shortcomings: This doesn't account for weight. So picking up a bowling ball will feel as light as picking up a notebook. EDIT: Hang on, we can simulate heavier weight by applying anti-force to the biceps -- pulling them toward the torso or the shoulder. An object can feel really hard to pick up if the shoulder restricts the bicep up to a certain point. I think this should work. OMG.
Gliding your hand across a wall
In this solution for hard touch, we need an adaptive algorithm. This will take some processing power, but we can potentially calculate the varying amounts of anti-force emitted by virtual objects as we dynamically interact with them. For example:
If in VR there's a wall in front of you, then the timing of the moment you feel a counter-force is subject to its placement in 3D as well as where your hand is in 3D. So when touching different areas of a wall your elbow will start to resist you at different levels of its extension depending on what part of the wall you're reaching out to touch.
Kicking a Soccer Ball
If you go kick a soccer ball, then upon the split second that your foot makes contact with the ball, a brief hard-touch force can be applied to your knee joint to simulate the "omph" of the kick. You'll feel the very tactile sensation of the knockback.
(The more I think about this, the more use cases I find.)
