With the increase in popularity of virtual reality (VR) systems, haptic devices have been garnering interest as means of augmenting users' immersion and experiences in VR. Unfortunately, most commercial gloves available on the market are targeted towards enterprise and research, and are too expensive to be accessible to the average consumer for entertainment.
Some efforts have been made by gaming and do-it-yourself (DIY) enthusiasts to develop cheap, accessible haptic gloves, but due to cost limitations, the designs are often simple and only provide feedback at the fingertips. Considering the many types of grasps used by humans to interact with objects, it is evident that haptic gloves must offer feedback to many regions of the hand, such as the palm and lengths of the fingers to provide more realistic feedback. This thesis discusses a novel, affordable design that provides haptic feedback to the intermediate and proximal phalanges of the fingers (index, middle, ring and pinkie) using a ratchet and pawl actuation mechanism. / Master of Science / Haptics, or simulation of the sense of touch, is already implemented in consumer devices such as smartphones and gaming controllers to augment users' immersive experiences. With the growing popularity of virtual reality, further advancements are being made, particularly in wearable haptic gloves, so users may physically feel the interactions with objects in virtual reality through their hands. Unfortunately, these products are currently inaccessible to the average consumer due to unaffordable pricing. To combat this issue, there have been efforts to develop cheap haptic gloves, but existing designs only provide feedback at the fingertips.
Fingertip-only feedback can feel unnatural to users since other areas of the hand are typically also involved when grasping objects.
To address the issue presented by low-cost fingertip haptic gloves, this thesis proposes a design which expands feedback to other areas of the hand while maintaining affordability and accessibility to average consumers.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/116457 |
| Date | 11 October 2023 |
| Creators | Ahn, Suyeon |
| Contributors | Mechanical Engineering, Leonessa, Alexander, Sandu, Corina, Akbari Hamed, Kaveh, Asbeck, Alan Thomas |
| Publisher | Virginia Tech |
| Source Sets | Virginia Tech Theses and Dissertation |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | ETD, application/pdf |
| Rights | Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ |
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