A helmet on the head, a jacket on the back and soon gloves or boots. The painting that allows you to plunge into virtual reality is more and more impressive and the sensations multiply. Welcome to the world of haptic feedback devices that bring virtual reality into the age of touch with the ability to physically interact with virtual objects and experience physical sensations. Haptics is the science that explores the sense of touch. Its advancement will bring about a small revolution in virtual reality, which has been limited to the touch of sight and hearing. Ignore the other senses, especially the sense of touch.
“We see that once they experience virtual reality, people seek to explore the environment by touching or extending their arms to feel things physically,” explains Xavier de Tinguy, thesis author on virtual reality and developer at Actronika. However, tactile sensations are still difficult to understand. Sight and hearing are processed by the eyes and ears, while we have mechanical receptors all over our bodies. This makes for a very immersive sensation but requires specific tactile interfaces for each area of the body,” explains Maud Marshall, professor at INSA in Rennes.
