Haptic Devices in Multi-User VR

This project will look at two interrelated problems of how to facilitate collaboration in co-located and distributed VR spaces, as well as haptics. In particular, the project will investigate methods to support multi-user interaction (e.g., navigation techniques such a redirected walking to avoid multi-user collisions, methods to support handing objects between users) with shape-changing haptic props. The haptic prop can be shared locally, changing shapes as necessary to map onto a different virtual object for each user. Alternatively, we also plan to use it in distributed (remote) VR scenarios - for example, allowing a VR user in one location to "pass" a tactile object to another user. In reality, the user is passing over the shape changing device; the other user also has a device which changes shape to match correspondingly provide the illusion of a tactile object being passed between two users.