Design and Modeling of an Ungrounded Haptic Gun that Simulates Recoil Using Asymmetric Force

The lack of perception of recoil limits the immersion of virtual reality first-person shooting games in which users hold a gun in their hand. This paper presents the design and modeling of an ungrounded haptic gun that could simulate the recoil using asymmetric force, which is rendered by a voice coil actuator and produces directional force perception to users rather than vibration feedback. A magnet is driven by the electromagnetic force and moves forward inside the gun like a bullet does and the corresponding reaction force is perceived by users as a recoil. A spring is used to reset the position of the magnet, and a friction damper is used to prevent a collision when the magnet returns to its initial position that breaks the rendering of asymmetric force. We analyzed the dynamic model of the recoil. A user study was conducted to comparatively evaluate the perception of shooting recoil as well as the subjective preference of the proposed recoil rendering method. The results show that our proposed haptic gun with asymmetric force rendering could induce clear perception of shooting recoil, and could provide a more favored virtual shooting experience.