Pneumatic Actuated Haptic Glove to Interact with the Virtual Human

Realistic haptic feedback of virtual human avatars would make the virtual world more alive. In the direction of this goal, we focused on making pneumatic actuated haptic glove to augment the perception of human skin response. We have designed a pneumatic controlled actuation with silicone-made cavities (end-effectors), which are situated at the fingertips and the center of the palm embedded within the glove. Various positive air pressure is used to inflate the chambers to perceive soft skins with different shape, stiffness, and homogeneity. The palm actuator is to provide feedback for a grasping interaction, whereas the fingertip actuators are used to generate finger-based touch, e.g., pinching with two fingers. The VR environment with the HMD is designed to improve the immersive experience. Altogether, the system is controlled wirelessly. In this work, we will demonstrate the various scenario of human body parts in which the user can interact with and touch the human to perceive the natural haptic feedback from the skin.