Feel Of Virtual Reality

Now-a-days virtual reality is a field of interest of every researcher. The issue with VR is that it only uses vision and sound for designing the 3d environment but the senses like touch and smell are still not developed. We propose the smart glove collaborated with unity 3d environment to provide a

Project Title

Feel Of Virtual Reality

Project Area of Specialization

Augmented and Virtual Reality

Project Summary

Now-a-days virtual reality is a field of interest of every researcher. The issue with VR is that it only uses vision and sound for designing the 3d environment but the senses like touch and smell are still not developed. We propose the smart glove collaborated with unity 3d environment to provide a sense of touch in the virtual environment. More precisely the smart glove provides a sense of touch in virtual reality. Our smart glove will provide force feedback as well as tactile feedback both feedbacks are essential to acquire a sense of touch. The critical dimensions of the glove were identified and balanced with the optimal layout of the sensor and actuator. With a vibrating motor in each individual finger, the Smart glove can produce vibrations for interactive cues, like textural changes that either a surface is soft-hard or smooth-rough. The interaction between a person and virtual environment is done with the Kinect device which tracks the skeletal movements and provides human interaction with a virtual environment. After developing a VR app using unity 2019 and smart glove the interfacing between them is done with the ESP 8266 Wi-Fi module. When the hand touches the object in a virtual environment, unity sends the command to Arduino Mega 2560, as result vibration motors, TEC1-12715 Thermoelectric Cooler Peltier, and heating tube are turned on accordingly the programming inside the Arduino mega 2560, thereby producing an immersive VR environment for the user.

The system block diagram is proposed in figure 1:

fig:1

Project Objectives

We aim to make a smart glove that lets our hand enter in a virtual environment increasing the immersive experience and removing the boundaries between the real virtual object. To develop smart glove which provides haptic feedback at low cost.

The key project objectives are stated here:

• Development of VR environment in unity.
• Interfacing MS Kinect with unity 3D and performing skeletal tracking.
• Design and fabrication of a smart glove with embedded vibrators,
• heaters, coolers and flex sensors,
• Interfacing the aforementioned sensors and actuators with
• Arduino.
• Achieving touch effects for different textures using variations in
• frequencies for vibration.
• Deploying wireless communication (UDP) between Arduino mega 2560 and
• unity 3d.
• Comparison between Oculus Go and android app development in
• cardboard VR mode.

Project Implementation Method

Our project is based on virtual reality, for that, we created a virtual environment in unity 2019. After creating a virtual environment skeletal tracking has to be done with the help of the Kinect device for tracking the player/person to be engrossed in a virtual environment. Even after this, the virtual environment seems not to be really true so that we added a feedback system to get more real experience with virtual reality. The feedback system involves the flex sensors on each finger to provide real-world parameters in terms of varying resistance upon bending. The output generated by resistance changes and collision detection in unity environment is fed to the vibrators on each finger, heating tubes wired inside the glove and TEC1-12715 Thermoelectric Cooler Peltier for cooling effect. As long as the fingers are bending the varying resistance due to flex sensor changes the vibration frequency of vibrators so that a person can feel different texture accordingly, additionally when a person touches the hot and cold object in the virtual environment he can also feel the same effect of heating or cooling through heating wire and TEC1-12715 Thermoelectric Cooler Peltier  respectively.

A flow chart is shown in below figure 2:

  fig:2

Benefits of the Project

The more we learn about virtual reality, the more we appreciate the benefits of virtual reality (VR). If we talk about applications of virtual reality, there are a bundle of applications like; VR used in gaming, healthcare, military and in all advanced companies and industries. Following are benefits of VR Smart glove;

Gaming: Smart glove will open new horizon VR gamers. Gaming will be a more enjoyable activity for spare time.

Medical healthcare: VR gloves are used in many different fields, they could useful resource in the bodily therapy of patients, where therapists can examine the patient’s progress from information amassed from VR glove. It can also serve as a very effective surgery simulator.

Military Training: virtual reality has been followed by way of the army. It is used for training functions and it has been very helpful for soldiers training for fight conditions. A virtual environment accomplishes this objective and eliminates any risk of damage to the life of soldiers. This technique has been proved to be safer and much less steeply-priced than traditional training techniques.

Technical Details of Final Deliverable

The final product is a hand glove embedded with flex sensors and high definition haptic feedback system that involves vibrators, heating tube, and TEC1-12715 Thermoelectric Cooler Peltier to provide the most advanced virtual reality experience. The glove features five flex sensors, five vibration motors, TEC1-12715 Thermoelectric Cooler Peltier, and long heating tube wrapped in the fingers and designed for a broad range of personal and commercial applications, giving users haptic feedback, while the glove connects to Android phone via ESP8266 Wi-Fi module using Arduino Mega 2560. The app is provided for android phone and developed through unity 2019 then the system is tested with Oculus Go as well as Google cardboard VR to provide stereo vision, and for skeletal tracking Kinect device is provided along with the setup.

Final Deliverable of the Project

HW/SW integrated system

Type of Industry

Education , Medical

Technologies

Augmented & Virtual Reality, Wearables and Implantables

Sustainable Development Goals

Quality Education, Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure

Required Resources

If you need this project, please contact me on contact@adikhanofficial.com