Wearable 3-DOF cutaneous haptic device with integrated IMU-based finger tracking

With the recent advancements of HMD (head mounted display) and the sensing technology (e.g., RGB-D camera and sensor fusion for localization), immersive VR (virtual reality) interaction, where users interact with the virtual environment using their bodies (e.g., head motion and hand grasping), has received great attention. To enhance the realism for this immersive VR interaction, the haptic feedback is desired. Conventional kinesthetic haptic devices (e.g., Force Dimension Omega 3®, etc.) are not so suitable for this purpose, due to their mechanical ground requirement bulky size and, consequently, high cost. In this context, we propose here a wearable cutaneous haptic device which can generate 3-DOF contact force feedback at the finger tip and track finger/palm rotation by using inertial measurement units (IMUs).