Sébastien Kuntz is the founder of MiddleVR, which is a middleware solution that allows you to connect to a wide range of consumer and industrial VR peripheral devices. He talks about some of the other VR locomotion and 3DUI features that are included within the MiddleVR Unity integration.
Sébastien was on a couple of different panel discussions at the IEEE VR conference including talking about open source vs closed source solutions in VR, as well as the future of projection-based VR solutions in the consumer market. One interesting point that Sébastien made is that there will always be projection-based environments because you can keep adding projectors to increase the number of pixels and resolution fidelity in these CAVE environments.
Sébastien also makes some interested differentiations between the consumer and academic community. While the consumer VR market is worried about providing solutions to problems right now, the academic IEEE VR community is more focused on looking at the problems that are 5-10 years down the road. But the IEEE VR community is also really focused on asking the right questions, and so it’s more about leaving the conference with more questions and research trajectories than it is necessarily about finding the answers to an immediate problem.
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Rough Transcript
[00:00:05.412] Kent Bye: The Voices of VR Podcast.
[00:00:12.052] Max Pfeiffer: I'm Max from Hannover University and I'm presenting here an Electromuscle Stimulation-Based Haptic Feedback. We did a Fitts' law study and test movement time and error rates compared to visual feedback and to vibrational feedback and test how the difference are. And for the user results we get pretty well response. So the user liked this feedback, ranked it as quite realistic and with really low delays and Yeah, they find it actually quite well.
[00:00:44.474] Kent Bye: And so what is it that's actually happening? Is it some sort of electronic stimulation, or what is it that you're actually doing to give this type of haptic feedback?
[00:00:51.795] Max Pfeiffer: Okay, in this work we did actually contract one muscle, so we attached electrodes to the lower arm, used an off-the-shelf massage system which generates a current which contracts the muscle, and we control this kind of current to provide haptic feedback. And this experiment, we calibrate this movement of the finger down to a level that you only feel the current. So there was not actuation, it was more like a tactile feedback.
[00:01:22.862] Kent Bye: And so how do you correlate when you're actually activating the stimulus of the electronic pulses based upon, is it a closure of hands or is it a pushing of a button, or how are you sort of knowing when you're going to give this haptic feedback?
[00:01:35.968] Max Pfeiffer: We use actually a 3D tracking system and use large 3D projection with head-tracked shutter glasses. So the user gets shutter glasses on with tracked marker and then we add it to the finger leaf, which is tracked also. And always when the user hits a target with a finger, which is flowing in front of the user, then he or she gets an impulse, the vibration or EMS impulse.
[00:02:04.213] Kent Bye: I see. And so, you know, when you're comparing this to, you know, haptic feedback versus no haptic feedback, when you're comparing those two, are you seeing with this Fitts' law that it's actually more efficient or faster, or what were some of the differences between the haptic feedback and no haptic feedback?
[00:02:20.028] Max Pfeiffer: there is a significant improvement in context of error rate so we have less errors if you're using EMS vibrational feedback compared to non-feedback and we measured like this throughput there was no significant value but also for the movement time there was no significant value but as I said the user feedback was quite good so we think we need to further investigate it in different situations. Different situations could be like occluding different targets or occluding with your hand some targets and give these targets like an haptic feedback.
[00:03:02.023] Kent Bye: And in terms of, I guess, the safety of sending electronic pulses for somebody, is there limits in terms of how much you can shock people, or was it discomforting to people when they were actually feeling this feedback?
[00:03:13.901] Max Pfeiffer: Yeah, actually, you need to be quite careful with this. Of course, it's current you apply to a user. In our cases, we're using out-of-the-shelf massage systems, so you can buy them from Amazon or from everywhere, from every shop. So, we ensure that these systems are safe. So, we always start with a really small current, scale it up, and always stay in this amount that the user will still be comfortable with this.
[00:03:40.797] Kent Bye: Yeah, I guess the question that I would wonder is sort of like the long-term effects or, you know, just it seems a little scary to start to send electromagnetic pulses on someone and something that may be intended for short-term use but if you're using it for long-term, yeah, so I don't know if there's like, if this is a viable long-term solution, I guess.
[00:03:57.547] Max Pfeiffer: Yeah, actually in Germany there are like 150 gyms which are using this kind of current to improve your fitness and build up your muscles. So one side effect could be that your arm gets stronger than before or you have muscle lag if you're using it for a long time.
[00:04:16.416] Kent Bye: I see, so it doesn't sound so negative just to be stronger, I guess.
[00:04:19.693] Max Pfeiffer: Yes, of course, you can go up to a level that it hurts, but in our cases we never reach this level.
[00:04:26.516] Kent Bye: I see, and so in the context of the university you're at, is this applied research for a very specific use case, or how did this come about?
[00:04:33.699] Max Pfeiffer: I think it's quite broad research, like in HCI in general, where you can use this kind of technology in HCI.
[00:04:43.844] Kent Bye: Right, so what's next for you in terms of going down and doing this research?
[00:04:47.813] Max Pfeiffer: Actually, next, I will present a CHI paper in this area about pedestrian navigation in this context, that we moved lag to steering people in a certain direction. But that's more on the CHI paper.
[00:05:02.996] Kent Bye: Okay. And for you, how did you first get into virtual reality? Or how did you get start interested into this human-computer interaction?
[00:05:10.699] Max Pfeiffer: I generally did my muscle seizes and interacting with multi-touch devices and I built up a steering wheel with a multi-touch display and did interaction on these. And over this I came like to my group and then we started with different kind of approaches and then I remember when I was like younger I used one of these massage system and then my muscles start to move with these and my shoulders lift up and down. And I said, OK, you can use this kind of phenomenon in HCI also.
[00:05:46.376] Kent Bye: And finally, what do you see as the ultimate potential for what virtual reality may be able to enable?
[00:05:53.559] Max Pfeiffer: Of course, the holodeck. Now, this is a long-term goal for this kind of reality. But still, you can build up areas or environments which are destroyed. For example, in wars or something, with all things, you can Let people feel something what what they never can do there was one example like going scuba diving or something if you never have the Possibility because you don't be able to scuba dive then you can like get the experience in some way Great. Well, thank you so much.
[00:06:28.173] Kent Bye: Okay, you're welcome And thank you for listening if you'd like to support the voices of VR podcast then please consider becoming a patron at patreon.com slash voices of VR
