Using VR to simulate drinking water, smoking, and brushing your teeth? These were all achieved by CMU researchers.
"The mouth is second only to the fingertips in terms of tactile sensitivity, which provides an opportunity to create a very fine haptic effect." Recently, at the Human Machine Interface (ACM CHI) conference, researchers at the Institute for Human-Computer Interaction at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) demonstrated VR devices that produce lip-tooth tactile sensations without touching the lips.
The device consists of a thin and compact ultrasonic transducer beamforming array that can be mounted on the bottom of a virtual reality headset.
Ultrasonic transducers focus the sound energy on the wearer's mouth, and they trigger different types of effects such as sliding, point pulses, or continuous vibrations. Users will feel these ultrasound effects on their lips, tongue, or teeth. The researchers say these oral touches could lead to new and interesting virtual reality experiences, such as simulating virtual liquids such as water or coffee on the lips of VR users, or even simulating the sensation of "smoking" a virtual cigarette.
In addition to the entertainment value, it has been envisioned that such an app could have medical benefits, such as virtual smoking cessation therapies that could help people quit smoking. Due to the nature of the study, scientists actually avoid mentioning any possibility of kissing, although technically speaking, it is very relevant.
The team says the mouth haptic innovation can be used to simulate the sensation of headwinds or rain slapping the face in virtual reality, which can radically improve the sense of immersion in vr environments.
In the demo, the researchers let the experiencer "enter" the dark forest and experience the spider "jumping" onto the lip (a simulation of random pulses). After the user shoots the spider with the flare gun, the user feels a splash of slime (simulated by random pulses on the mouth at a higher frequency).
The researchers wrote, "It is important that all components are integrated into the headset, which means that the user does not need to wear additional accessories and does not need to place any external infrastructure in the room." "This is an important advance, and the modified headset no longer requires placing the device near the user's mouth as before. The 64 40kHz ultrasonic sensor arrays mounted on the bottom of the VR headset measure 17.9x10.6x1.5cm and weigh 107g, with a much lower sense of presence than the previous way.
The study of the participants found that oral touch greatly increased the sense of immersion and provided a better sense of presence for most people. However, some users have reported that using ultrasound to simulate water is cognitively incongruous.
"Although the haptic effect was interesting and the location was good, the feeling itself didn't necessarily meet my expectations," the user said. The researchers acknowledge in the paper that their system is fundamentally limited because vibration alone is not enough to simulate the sensation of the mouth. Still, participants largely preferred to have a mouth touch than not at all.
Currently, the team is working to make the design smaller and lighter. Given that more work needs to be done, it may take a while for this technology to enter the market.