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A Haptic Controller Based on Smart Actuators for Mobile Virtual Environment

  • Journal of Knowledge Information Technology and Systems
  • Abbr : JKITS
  • 2019, 14(5), pp.435-444
  • DOI : 10.34163/jkits.2019.14.5.001
  • Publisher : Korea Knowledge Information Technology Society
  • Research Area : Interdisciplinary Studies > Interdisciplinary Research
  • Received : March 19, 2019
  • Accepted : August 9, 2019
  • Published : October 31, 2019

Seok-Han Lee 1,  Choi Dong-Soo 1,  Lee Hye-Sun 2,  Sang-Youn Kim 1

1한국기술교육대학교
2한국기술교육대학교 첨단기술연구소

Accredited

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we propose a handheld haptic controller that conveys kinesthetic sensation to users. The haptic controller consists of two haptic buttons based on the smart actuators and thin pressure sensors. The smart actuator is composed of an electromagnet and a soft magnetorheological elastomer whose stiffness can be changed by the external magnetic strength and flux. If voltage input is applied to the electromagnet, the magnet generates the magnetic fields to make the magnetorheological elastomer stiff. The amount of stiffness depends on the amplitude of the voltage input. Therefore, the smart actuator can simulate the stiffness of a target object. Furthermore, when the AC signal is provided to the electromagnet, the magnetorheological elastomer generates mechanical vibration. We construct a mobile virtual application whose goal is to move a bird to another place without colliding obstacles. Two buttons in the haptic controller are mapped as the soaring and the shooting an item, respectively. If a user does not push the soaring button, the bird falls toward the ground because it is affected by gravity. In case of pressing the soaring button, the bird that is in the application soars up. At that time, we can control the stiffness of the haptic button according to simulate various virtual environments (Blue sky, Snowstorm, and Underwater). Furthermore, when the user press shooting button, the haptic button generate vibration to make user feel shooting an item. We conducted the user study to evaluate the proposed haptic system. The result of the user study shows that the proposed haptic controller can improve the user’s enjoyment, immersion, and operability in the mobile virtual environment than the general controller without haptic feedback. We expect that the proposed haptic system is widely applied to various virtual reality applications such as virtual education/training and military or medical simulators.

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This paper was written with support from the National Research Foundation of Korea.
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