Tactoglove presenting tactile sensations for intuitive gestural interaction

In the research of augmented reality, many experimental systems have been introduced so far by presenting CG objects into a real environment with visual and auditory information, so that a user would interact with the CG objects and the environment. To present higher reality, not only visual and auditory information but also tactile and other stimuli should be presented to users to enhance the perception. We have paid attention to the human tactile sensations, and have been constructing an interactive system, which presents a tactile sensation in addition to visual and auditory sensation. The system is constructed by a head mounted display (HMD), audio speakers, a microphone, two tactile gloves and a PC. A user wares a HMD, and a CG character is superposed on his palm wearing the tactile glove. Stepping sounds of the character are output from the speakers, and various tactile stimuli are presented from the glove according to the motion of the character. The user is also able to interact with the character using the other hand by pushing and picking the object. This paper presents the gestural interaction with a virtual character employing a tactile glove, together with the evaluation of the tactile sensations by the users' experiments.