XRtic: A Prototyping Toolkit for XR Applications using Cloth Deformation

This paper presents XRtic, a prototyping toolkit enabling real-world cloth deformations to be used in novel ways in eXtended Reality (XR) applications. XRtic was developed based on the insights gathered from semi-structured interviews with XR developers. It consists of custom-made actuators that can be attached to regular clothing, a controller bus system, and a controller interface. Using our toolkit, users can design and integrate different cloth deformation types synchronised with virtual content in a plug-and-play manner. Along with a technical analysis of the actuation behaviour of the XRtic actuators, we present the findings gathered from a user study with eight XR developers, focusing on the usability of the system and creative support. Overall, participants found it an easy-to-use toolkit that supports iterative and rapid prototyping, and enables cloth to be deformed in unique ways in synchronisation with XR applications. Based on the findings, we also report limitations and future work relating to our system.