Haptic around: multiple tactile sensations for immersive environment and interaction in virtual reality

In this paper, we present Haptic Around, a hybrid-haptic feedback system, which utilizes fan, hot air blower, mist creator and heat light to recreate multiple tactile sensations in virtual reality for enhancing the immersive environment and interaction. This system consists of a steerable haptic device rigged on the top of the user head and a handheld device also with haptics feedbacks to simultaneously provide tactile sensations to the users in a 2m x 2m space. The steerable haptic device can enhance the immersive environment for providing full body experience, such as heat in the desert or cold in the snow mountain. Additionally, the handheld device can enhance the immersive interaction for providing partial body experience, such as heating the iron or quenching the hot iron. With our system, the users can perceive visual, auditory and haptic when they are moving around in virtual space and interacting with virtual object. In our study, the result has shown the potential of the hybrid-haptic feedback system, which the participants rated the enjoyment, realism, quality, immersion higher than the other.