Tactile Virtual Reality System Created

 Interfaces  

Working with ultrasound, researchers have developed a new method of haptic feedback. The approach lets users feel invisible holograms in mid-air.

You wont have to imagine what it would be like to touch a priceless artifact in a musuem, or a character from a video game, or your in-progress CAD file, or an organ scanned from your own body in the future.  Researchers have developed a prototype method for creating three-dimensional haptic shapes in mid-air using focused ultrasound. The potential applications for the technology are nearly limitless, and will help define how we interact with digital media in a few years.

Unlike another method that used puffs of air, the approach applies the principles of acoustic radiation force, whereby the non-linear effects of sound produce forces on the skin which are strong enough to generate tactile sensations.

This mid-air haptic feedback eliminates the need for any attachment of actuators or contact with physical devices.

The user perceives a discernible haptic shape when the corresponding acoustic interference pattern is generated above a precisely controlled two-dimensional phased array of ultrasound transducers.

"Touchable holograms, immersive virtual reality that you can feel and complex touchable controls in free space, are all possible ways of using this system."

The research published in ACM Transactions on Graphics, was led by Dr Ben Long and colleagues Professor Sriram Subramanian, Sue Ann Seah and Tom Carter from the University of Bristol’s Department of Computer Science, could change the way 3D shapes are used.  The new technology could enable surgeons to explore a CT scan by enabling them to feel a disease, such as a tumor, or bones from an X-, using haptic feedback.

The method uses ultrasound, which is focused onto hands above the device and that can be felt. By focusing complex patterns of ultrasound, the air disturbances can be felt as floating 3D shapes.

To demonstrate the effect of the system visually, the researchers have demonstrated the ultrasound patterns by directing the device at a thin layer of oil so that the depressions in the surface can be seen as spots when lit by a lamp.

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The system generates an invisible 3D shape that can be added to 3D displays to create something that can be seen and felt. The research team have also shown that users can match a picture of a 3D shape to the shape created by the system.

Long, said, “Touchable holograms, immersive virtual reality that you can feel and complex touchable controls in free space, are all possible ways of using this system.

“In the future, people could feel holograms of objects that would not otherwise be touchable, such as feeling the differences between materials in a CT scan or understanding the shapes of artefacts in a museum.”


SOURCE  University of Bristol

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