VGRIP: Virtual Reality in a GRIP

Virtual reality is becoming increasingly popular in fields of visualization for education, entertainment and research. One of virtual reality's largest barriers is making it as realistic as possible for users and mapping real life tasks to it. VGRIP is a virtual reality grip which consists of integrated hardware and software implementations to map a user's hand movement to the virtual reality world. The virtual reality grip concentrates on giving the user a sense of movement in the virtual environment. It designed to enable users to work with their hands virtually in order to avoid risky and unsafe environments. This will allow safety while still ensuring high-level competencies and the sense of realism in many training fields. Using the Unity engine and a physical glove, a hand model was customized in Unity to reflect and interact with the motions of the user wearing the glove. A LEAP motion sensor reads the motion of the physical hand, transferring its data to Unity serially. Electromagnets were used to lock the user's hand movement as soon as the virtual hand in Unity grabs an object. This enables the user to get sensory feedback and feel the virtual objects and their resistance.