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  • Review Article
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Wearable haptics for virtual reality and beyond

Nature Reviews Electrical Engineering (2024)Cite this article

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Abstract

Research has increasingly focused on wearable systems that provide informative haptic sensations to the hands, enhancing user interaction in virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) environments. Concurrently, the evolution of VR visors in terms of wearability, quality of the visual immersion and immediateness of bare-hand interaction poses both opportunities and challenges for haptic systems, which must match these visors in usability, hand-tracking compliance and quality of experience. Designing haptic devices involves trade-offs between the dimensions and quality of feedback, often falling short of the richness and complexity of natural haptic sensations. Recent studies have explored various actuating methods and haptic prototypes to enhance the wearability and feedback richness of haptic devices. Notably, the development of soft interfaces actuated by diverse principles has emerged as a key trend. Moreover, beyond simulating physical interaction, haptic technologies can provide high-level information for various applications, including posture correction, navigation and remote control of humanoid robots. In this Review, we provide an overview of wearable haptics for VR applications, introducing principles of haptic rendering and the relationship between stimulus modalities and actuating solutions. We discuss emerging actuating methods and wearable device designs, examining their experimental applications in innovative scenarios of VR and beyond.

Key points

  • Various haptic stimuli and mechanoreceptors are involved in the sense of touch and in natural interaction with physical objects. These can be mapped to different actuation modalities adopted by wearable device designs.

  • Haptic rendering in immersive virtual reality (VR) is a trade-off between the plurality of haptic stimuli and the constraint provided by physical wearable devices. Certain rendering principles can take advantage of those haptic features that humans are most sensitive to.

  • According to actuation principles and target applications, a plurality of haptic designs is proposed in the literature, covering different actuation methods and different body segments, from the finger pad to the limbs.

  • Although rendering in VR is a target application for wearable device design, innovative applications are proposed in several other fields, ranging from postural correction and navigation assistance to communication and remote control of humanoid robots.

  • Research in wearable haptics is rich in innovative actuators, devices and applications, but certain fundamental haptic features, such as the stick–slip condition and wearability of devices compared with rendered features, still represent an unmet need and a challenge to foster the use of wearable haptics in VR and in other innovative applications.

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Fig. 1: Application scenarios of wearable haptics.
Fig. 2: Typologies of mechanoreceptors.
Fig. 3: Connections between stimulus modalities and actuation principles.
Fig. 4: Typologies of fingertip haptic devices.
Fig. 5: Typologies of hand-worn haptic devices.
Fig. 6: Typologies of arm-worn haptic devices.
Fig. 7: Application of wearable haptics for neurorehabilitation in VR.

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Acknowledgements

This Review is dedicated to the memory of Prof. Vincent Hayward, who suddenly passed in 2023. He has been an esteemed colleague and a great scientist, who has provided profound inspiration and mentorship to a high number of researchers in haptics both at the academic and industrial levels, such that for his significant contribution to this area he is also well known as the ‘godfather of haptics’.

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    Antonio Frisoli & Daniele Leonardis

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A.F. and D.L. contributed equally to the manuscript. A.F. and D.L. researched data for the article, substantially contributed to discussion of content, wrote the manuscript and reviewed/edited the manuscript before submission.

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Frisoli, A., Leonardis, D. Wearable haptics for virtual reality and beyond. Nat Rev Electr Eng (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44287-024-00089-8

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