Haptic Retargeting: Dynamic Repurposing of Passive Haptics for Enhanced Virtual Reality Experiences

Manipulating a virtual object with appropriate passive haptic cues provides a satisfying sense of presence in virtual reality. However, scaling such experiences to support multiple virtual objects is a challenge as each one needs to be accompanied with a precisely-located haptic proxy object. We propose a solution that overcomes this limitation by hacking human perception. We have created a framework for repurposing passive haptics, called haptic retargeting, that leverages the dominance of vision when our senses conflict. With haptic retargeting, a single physical prop can provide passive haptics for multiple virtual objects. We introduce three approaches for dynamically aligning physical and virtual objects: world manipulation, body manipulation and a hybrid technique which combines both world and body manipulation. Our study results indicate that all our haptic retargeting techniques improve the sense of presence when compared to typical wand-based 3D control of virtual objects. Furthermore, our hybrid haptic retargeting achieved the highest satisfaction and presence scores while limiting the visible side-effects during interaction.