RealWalk: Feeling Ground Surfaces While Walking in Virtual Reality

We present RealWalk, a pair of haptic shoes for HMD-based virtual reality, designed to create realistic sensations of ground surface deformation through MR fluid (Magnetorheological fluid) actuators. RealWalk offers a novel interaction scheme through physical interaction between the shoes and the ground surfaces while walking in a virtual reality space. Our unique approach of using the property of MR fluid creates a variety of ground material deformation such as snow, mud, and dry sand by changing its viscosity when the actuators are pressed by the user's foot. We build an interactive virtual reality application with four different virtual scenes to explore the design space of RealWalk.