Virtual Haptic Radar

Abstract

We present here a first prototype of the Virtual Haptic Radar (VHR), a wearable device helping actors become aware of the presence of invisible virtual objects in their path when evolving in a virtual studio (such as a "bluescreen" filming stage [Figure 1]). The VHR is a natural extension of the Haptic Radar (HR) and its principle [Cassinelli et al. 2006] in the realm of virtual reality: while each module of the HR had a small vibrator and a rangefinder to measure distance to real obstacles, the VHR module lacks the rangefinder but accommodates instead a (cheap) ultrasound-based indoor positioning system that gives it the ability to know exactly where it is situated relatively to an external frame of reference.