Electrotactile Feedback For Enhancing Contact Information in Virtual Reality

TL;DR

This study introduces a wearable electrotactile feedback system that improves contact precision in virtual reality interactions, potentially replacing visual cues and reducing visual clutter.

Contribution

We propose a novel electrotactile feedback method for virtual contact information, demonstrating its effectiveness comparable to visual feedback in user performance.

Findings

Electrotactile feedback improves contact accuracy.

No significant difference between electrotactile and visual feedback after calibration.

Electrotactile feedback can replace visual cues in VR contact tasks.

Abstract

This paper presents a wearable electrotactile feedback system to enhance contact information for mid-air interactions with virtual objects. In particular, we propose the use of electrotactile feedback to render the interpenetration distance between the user's finger and the virtual content is touched. Our approach consists of modulating the perceived intensity (frequency and pulse width modulation) of the electrotactile stimuli according to the registered interpenetration distance. In a user study (N=21), we assessed the performance of four different interpenetration feedback approaches: electrotactile-only, visual-only, electrotactile and visual, and no interpenetration feedback. First, the results showed that contact precision and accuracy were significantly improved when using interpenetration feedback. Second, and more interestingly, there were no significant differences between visual and electrotactile feedback when the calibration was optimized and the user was familiarized with electrotactile feedback. Taken together, these results suggest that electrotactile feedback could be an efficient replacement of visual feedback for enhancing contact information in virtual reality avoiding the need of active visual focus and the rendering of additional visual artefacts.