TY - GEN
T1 - Enabling Interaction with Virtual Fluids and Mixed Media using a High Dexterity Hand Exoskeleton
AU - Schmidt, Annika
AU - Pereira, Aaron
AU - Baker, Thomas
AU - Pleintinger, Benedikt
AU - Hulin, Thomas
AU - Chen, Zhaopeng
AU - Abbink, David A.
AU - Lii, Neal Y.
N1 - Accepted Author Manuscript
PY - 2020
Y1 - 2020
N2 - Advances in exoskeleton technology now enable interacting with rigid objects in a virtual or remote environment using one's hand and fingertips. However, interaction with non-solid materials - such as liquids, sediments and regolith - alongside solids, can greatly extend the versatility of this technology. Rendering rigid objects adequately requires a control loop with high update rates, whereas fluid dynamics equations are computationally expensive. To accommodate this, the fluid dynamics can be simplified - particularly for fluids with high viscosity - resulting in a fast-to-calculate model to enabling haptic rendering of viscous fluids and rigid bodies simultaneously using DLR's Exodex Adam hand exoskeleton. Viscosity as a proprioceptive cue of fluids can be presented to the human through force feedback at multiple points on the human hand - fingers and palm - letting the user interact with a virtual environment in a more natural way and making the experience more immersive. We carry out two user studies to investigate the human perception abilities of virtual fluids rendered with simplified dynamics, and the discernability of different viscosity in virtual fluids compared real fluids. Results show that virtual media can give the user the perception of interacting with a fluid, even with simplified models, at a high update frequency. Furthermore, the material discernibility corresponds well to actual interaction with real viscous fluids. This shows great promise forward for haptic in-hand interaction in fluid and mixed media environments.
AB - Advances in exoskeleton technology now enable interacting with rigid objects in a virtual or remote environment using one's hand and fingertips. However, interaction with non-solid materials - such as liquids, sediments and regolith - alongside solids, can greatly extend the versatility of this technology. Rendering rigid objects adequately requires a control loop with high update rates, whereas fluid dynamics equations are computationally expensive. To accommodate this, the fluid dynamics can be simplified - particularly for fluids with high viscosity - resulting in a fast-to-calculate model to enabling haptic rendering of viscous fluids and rigid bodies simultaneously using DLR's Exodex Adam hand exoskeleton. Viscosity as a proprioceptive cue of fluids can be presented to the human through force feedback at multiple points on the human hand - fingers and palm - letting the user interact with a virtual environment in a more natural way and making the experience more immersive. We carry out two user studies to investigate the human perception abilities of virtual fluids rendered with simplified dynamics, and the discernability of different viscosity in virtual fluids compared real fluids. Results show that virtual media can give the user the perception of interacting with a fluid, even with simplified models, at a high update frequency. Furthermore, the material discernibility corresponds well to actual interaction with real viscous fluids. This shows great promise forward for haptic in-hand interaction in fluid and mixed media environments.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85098889184&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1109/SMC42975.2020.9283274
DO - 10.1109/SMC42975.2020.9283274
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85098889184
T3 - Conference Proceedings - IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics
SP - 2925
EP - 2932
BT - Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, SMC 2020
PB - IEEE
CY - Piscataway, NJ, USA
T2 - 2020 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, SMC 2020
Y2 - 11 October 2020 through 14 October 2020
ER -