HaptGlove—Untethered Pneumatic Glove for Multimode Haptic Feedback in Reality–Virtuality Continuum

Novel haptics technologies are urgently needed to bridge the gap between entirely physical world and fully digital environment to render a more realistic and immersive human–computer interaction. Current virtual reality (VR) haptic gloves either deliver limited haptic feedback or are bulky and heavy. The authors develop a haptic glove or HaptGlove, an untethered and lightweight pneumatic glove, that allows users to “physically” interact in a VR environment and enables both kinesthetic and cutaneous sensations naturally and realistically. Integrated with five pairs of haptic feedback modules and fiber sensors, HaptGlove provides variable stiffness force feedback and fingertip force and vibration feedback, allowing users to touch, press, grasp, squeeze, and pull various virtual objects and feel the dynamic haptic changes. Significant improvements in VR realism and immersion are observed in a user study with participants achieving 78.9% accuracy in sorting six virtual balls of different stiffnesses. Importantly, HaptGlove facilitates VR training, education, entertainment, and socialization in a reality–virtuality continuum.