Drones attached to you by strings could give you a more realistic simulation of the forces you should feel when interacting with things in virtual reality.
Various tricks have been used to make virtual reality more immersive and convincing, including fans that mimic wind and muscle vibrations that fool nerves into perceiving weight.
狈辞飞,听 at Saarland University in Germany and his colleagues have created a system that uses a drone attached to a finger by a string to mimic the feel of pressing a physical button. It simulates the button鈥檚 resistance by pulling on the string. They next hope to run tests using multiple drones attached to different parts of the body.
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The drone they have tested is just 95 millimetres across and weighs 72 grams, and its onboard battery allowed a flight time of up to 7 minutes. Feick says there are challenges with keeping a drone stable while it pulls on the string. The tiny machines can begin to oscillate or drift, and coordinating multiple drones so that they don鈥檛 crash or tangle strings will be difficult.
The noise of the devices and the draft provided by their rotors can also prove distracting, and there are safety concerns about being physically attached to drones with high-speed rotors.
鈥淭o be totally honest with you, it鈥檚 not something that you can right now test with people in a safe manner,鈥� says Feick. So the team had fishing nets for catching the drones to try to keep participants safe, he says.
He says his design will require quieter, safer drones to become practical. 鈥淭here has been some progress in terms of blade-free drones,鈥� says Feick, which soundlessly fly around and levitate using ultrasonic waves.
UIST 鈥�22 Adjunct
