VirCHEW Reality: On-Face Kinesthetic Feedback for Enhancing Food-Intake Experience in Virtual Reality

While haptic interfaces for virtual reality (VR) has received extensive research attention, on-face haptics in VR remained less explored, especially for virtual food intake. In this paper, we introduce VirCHEW Reality, a face-worn haptic device designed to provide on-face kinesthetic force feedback, to enhance the virtual food-chewing experience in VR. Leveraging a pneumatic actuation system, VirCHEW Reality controlled the process of air inflation and deflation, to simulate the mechanical properties of food textures, such as hardness, cohesiveness, and stickiness. We evaluated the system through three user studies. First, a just-noticeable difference (JND) study examined users’ sensitivity to and the system’s capability of rendering different levels of on-face pneumatic-based kinesthetic feedback while users performing chewing action. Building upon the user-distinguishable signal ranges found in the first study, we further conducted a matching study to explore the correspondence between the kinesthetic stimuli provided by our device and user-perceived food textures, revealing the capability of simulating food texture properties during chewing (e.g., hardness, cohesiveness, stickiness). Finally, a user study in a VR eating scenario showed that VirCHEW Reality could significantly improve the users’ ratings on the sense of presence, compared to the condition without haptic feedback. Our findings further highlighted possible applications in virtual/remote dining, healthcare, and immersive entertainment.