Free-Space Haptic Feedback for 3D Displays via Air-Vortex Rings

With recent developments in 3D display interfaces, which are now capable of delivering rich and immersive visual experiences, a need has arisen to develop haptic-feedback technologies that can seamlessly be integrated with such displays -- in order to maintain the sense of visual realism during interactions and to enable multimodal user experiences. We present an approach to augmenting conventional and 3D displays with free-space haptic feedback capabilities via a large number of closely-spaced air-vortex-ring generators mounted along the periphery of the display. We then present our ongoing work on building an open-source system based on this approach that uses 16 vortex-ring generators, and show how it could serve as a multimodal interactive interface, as a research tool, and as a novel platform for creative expressions.