Development of Haptic Suit for whole human body using vibrators

Abstract

This paper describes a method of synthesizing haptic sensation to the whole human body using vibrators in large working volume virtual environment. In such environment, haptic devices must have following characteristics, (1) large working volume (2) light weight (3) easy to move. Vibrating device is satisfied such characteristics. By setting some vibrators to user's body and controlling the pattern of the vibration, we can feel the virtual object. We developed a vibrator suit in CABIN(Computer Augmented Booth for Image Navigation). Using this system, we can feel virtual objects and walls through the whole body and walk virtual world to avoid interfering these walls. The effectiveness of this system is tested through experiment.