Shape Memory Alloy Haptic Compression Garment for Media Augmentation in Virtual Reality Environment
Miles Priebe, Esther W. Foo, Brad T Holschuh · 2020
Compression-based haptics instrumented into soft, wearable systems have the potential to enhance/augment gaming and entertainment experiences. Here, we present a computer-mediated Shape Memory Alloy (SMA) garment capable of delivering spatially and temporally dynamic compression and thermal stimuli for the purposes of enhancing a movie-watching affective experience based on 4 different emotions: sadness, love, gratitude, fear. Preliminary findings, still pending publication, were obtained from an MTurk survey (n=53) that seek to gather how different emotions can/should be represented physically through a haptic garment. A proposed study in a virtual reality (VR) environment is also introduced as a next step to evaluate how the presence/absence of haptics changes a user's video-watching experience, including immersion, enjoyment, presence, and felt emotional intensity, evaluated through objective (biometrics) and subjective (self-report questionnaire and qualitative interview) measures.