Implementation and evaluation of a haptic presentation system using a drone equipped with forward propulsion rotors

Abstract

Today, VR technology is used in various situations. However commonly used VR systems cannot present enough haptic feedback. Therefore, even if a button is pushed in the virtual space, hands or arms go through the button. In order to solve this problem, we implemented and evaluated a system in which a drone is flown according to the position of a virtual button, and users push the drone to feel haptic feedback. Because the button pushing interaction requires enough strong and rapidly force, the drone has rotors to move machine rapidly and push a user. This rotor is called "forward propulsion rotors" and a drone equipped with these rotors is called a "forward propulsion drone". The system was evaluated in two ways. In the first evaluation, the force provided by forward propulsion drone was measured. As a result, the force provided by forward propulsion drone is enough to present interaction of pushing a button. In the second evaluation, a user evaluation was performed by combining a forward propulsion drone with a VR environment. As a result, users feel an enough repulsion force is provided by forward propulsion rotors.