AmbientTransfer: Presence Enhancement by Converting Video Ambient to Users' Somatosensory Feedback

Haptic feedback can improve users' presence when watching immersive videos. In this work, we present our “AmbientTransfer” framework for demonstrating how to “embed” users in the video ambient with somatosensory feedback. Particularly, AmbientTransfer can obtain and convert video ambient factors, e.g., rain intensities, into dynamic haptic feedback by slight electrostimulation in various levels. Then AmbientTransfer maps various levels of haptic feedback to different body parts of users wearing the emerging electrostimulation suit. Preliminary experimental results show that AmbientTransfer can considerably enhance the users' presence. We believe that AmbientTransfer is worth of further exploration for exploiting its full potentials.