Multimodal haptics for immersive environments – MIMESIS

These last years have seen an explosion of novel haptic technologies providing various haptic sensations across all the user’s body. However, while these technologies have now been made available, virtual reality systems are still facing a fundamental lack of rich haptic feedback able to convey compelling sensations. As of today, haptic feedback mainly fails (1) to render simultaneously multiple haptic stimuli, (2) to achieve interactive framerates compatible with immersive environments, and (3) to preserve user’s immersion during 3D interaction with virtual worlds.
The goal of MIMESIS is to introduce a ground-breaking global strategy for handling multimodal haptic feedback within immersive environments through the design of a computational framework dedicated to immersive haptics and targeting all the above limitations. Our original methodology proposes for the first time the introduction of perceptual data at each step of the design framework in order to bridge the gap between the novel generation of haptic technologies and the immersive environments. Thanks to its innovative computational approach, MIMESIS addresses: (a) the design of physics-based rendering models able to combine various haptic inputs into a realistic feedback, (b) the design of computationally-efficient algorithms for coupling the rendering models to immersive environments and (c) the design of 3D interaction paradigms for combining multimodal haptic stimuli with multi-sensory information.
In addition to significant advances in the design of computational haptic rendering models, this research is expected in the long run to considerably enrich our 3D interaction with virtual worlds by providing realistic multi-sensory feedback with multiple haptic sensations. Thanks to its multidisciplinary aspect, it will also contribute to improve our understanding of the haptic perception of virtual worlds, as well as the underlying models in the fields of Computer Graphics, Haptics and Virtual Reality.