Haptic-go-round: A Surrounding Platform for Encounter-type Haptics in Virtual Reality Experiences

We present Haptic-go-round, a surrounding platform that allows deploying props and devices to provide haptic feedbacks in any direction in virtual reality experiences. The key component of Haptic-go-round is a motorized turntable that rotates the correct haptic device to the right direction at the right time to match what users are about to touch. We implemented a working platform including plug-and-play prop cartridges and a software interface that allow experience designers to agilely add their haptic components and use the platform for their applications. We conducted technical experiments and two user studies on Haptic-go-round to evaluate its performance. We report the results and discuss our insights and limitations.