Elastic-Move: Passive Haptic Device with Force Feedback for Virtual Reality Locomotion

With advances in virtual reality, users can experience in the immersive virtual environment by a head-mounted display. One of the most widely used interaction techniques in VR application is locomotion. Most VR applications currently use teleportation as a locomotion method. Because teleportation does not involve any visible translational motion, it can avoid VR sickness. However, teleportation still has some disadvantages. Compared to the joystick which uses dash to move in the virtual environment, teleportation would reduce user’s immersion and make them lose the sense of direction due to the lack of moving process. In this paper, we introduce the ”Elastic-Move”, an approach for cost-effectively using passive force feedback to reduce VR sickness and allow users to maintain immersion and sense of direction. We propose two haptic devices with force feedback: ”Elastic-Rope” and ”Elastic-Box”. Elastic-Rope is consisting of elastic ropes and controllers, and Elastic-Box is consisting of eight springs and a steel frame. We conducted an experiment that compared the degree of VR sickness by simulator sickness questionnaire(SSQ) survey while moving in the virtual environment among Dash, Teleport, Elastic-Rope, and Elastic-Box. As a result, Elastic-Rope and Elastic-Box reduce the VR sickness of users. Besides, Elastic-Box can be transposed in numerous applications because it is a low-cost and versatile device. This work suggests that passive force feedback can effectively reduce VR sickness.