Virtual bumps display based on electrical muscle stimulation

Abstract

With the development of Virtual Reality (VR) technology, it is becoming possible to generate haptic sensations toward virtual objects. However, in the Augmented Reality (AR) environment with conventional haptic displays, it is difficult for the user to touch the object directly because the device enters between him/her and the touching object. Therefore, we propose to use electrical muscle stimulation (EMS) to present haptic sensations seamlessly in an AR environment. In this study, we constructed a system that reproduces bumps on a flat display using EMS. In addition, we conducted three psychophysical experiments to evaluate the effectiveness of our system.