Tangible Substitution in VR: A Method for Reducing Simultaneously Required Tangibles During Interaction in Virtual Reality
Tobias Haker, Fabian Hesse · 2020
The use of tangibles to provide haptic feedback during interaction in virtual reality has been researched for several years. One option is to represent each virtual object by exactly one physical one. Doing so makes the number of virtual objects directly affect the number of tangibles needed. It is, therefore, not possible to interact with a more sophisticated scene without first providing the required number of tangibles for the interaction. Since the user can see virtual objects in VR independently of whether they currently have a physical representation, it is not necessary to provide all virtual objects with a physical representation at the same time. In this thesis we present methods which allow multiple virtual objects to be represented by a limited number of physical objects. For this purpose we develop motorized tangibles and let them dynamically assume the identity of different virtual objects in real-time. We present a study that validates our implementation by evaluating its impact on the usability and presence of the user in VR. Finally, we discuss expected results of the planned study regarding the practical relevance of our methods.