Grensing, Florian

Immersion and presence are important aspects of virtual reality (VR). Efforts are therefore being made to enhance these effects in order to increase the impact of VR and its transferability to reality. This is particularly important in research areas such as medical education and psychology. The development of haptic gloves has therefore increased significantly in recent years. These are immersive input devices designed to make virtual objects tangible. However, the research field is still very new and there is insufficient research on their handling and effect. For this reason, an application was developed to compare different haptic data gloves with different haptic technologies. A glove with vibrotactile feedback (Manus Prime X Haptic VR) and a glove with additional force feedback (SenseGlove) were used and compared in multiple tasks. These include finger tracking and gesture recognition, as well as hand tracking and the behaviour of gloves when grasping objects with and without haptics. The aim is to determine how well the haptics could be integrated and which is more accepted by the test subjects. For this purpose, a questionnaire has been designed to evaluate the effect of the haptic gloves on users. It aims to get a first impression of the tactile gloves available on the market and to advance research in the area.

Cognitive performance is an important aspect of life. Not only does thinking enable us to act, there is also an interaction between cognitive performance and mental health. It is therefore increasingly important to train and practice one’s cognitive abilities and benefit from brain plasticity. According to Vester’s model of learning types visual, auditiv and haptic impression are imporant for learning. An existing memory training application, which transfers the concept of the game Pairs with personal memories into virtual reality (VR), has now been supplemented with a haptic impression. The original application already establishes the visual and auditory perception channels. With new haptic hardware constantly appearing on the market, the Tactsuit X40 haptic vest from bhaptics has now made it possible to include a third perceptual channel with a wide variation of haptic sensations on various parts of the upper body. Each playing card is associated with an individual image, a piece of music and a vibration pattern. All of which are designed to help the user remember the position of the card. Each of these aspects can be freely enabled and disabled. The result of this work is an application which aims to find if and how strongly haptic impressions influence memory performance. By taking more types of learning into account, we hope to achieve a better memory training. A study has been designed to evaluate the specific aspects of the application and is currently being carried out. In addition to the self-generated haptic patterns, it is also possible to generate haptic impulses based on audio sources. These could possibly provide further support in this application.

The field of virtual reality (VR) is no longer limited to the entertainment sector, and the use also increased in the sector of healthcare and therapy. This paper attempts to compare the effectiveness of a Behavioral Avoidance Test for spider phobia in virtual reality to in vivo. To do this, two different BAT approaches are designed for both in vivo and in virtuo to be compared by a group of phobic participants. In addition, physiological data of the participants were recorded to investigate this comparison on a physiological level.

Avatars are often used to represent people in the virtual world. In the process, they can also have numerous psychological influences on the users. Therefore, this paper discusses a multiplayer application in virtual reality and how a appealing avatar could be designed in it. In a small study with six persons the application was tested competitively in teams of two, the users filled out a questionnaire and answered some additional questions. While an increase in motivation was observed in all participants, the choice of the preferred avatar was not uniform. Thus, this showed that an appealing avatar for everyone could not simply be determined, but personal preferences and experience must be taken into account.