Haptic-Enabled Buttons Through Adaptive Trigger Resistance

While commercial controllers for virtual reality (VR) offer a variety of components to register user input, their ability to generate meaningful haptic feedback during the interaction lags behind. This prevents users from experiencing the virtual world through their haptic sense. For example, grabbing a light virtual object feels identical to grabbing a heavy virtual object. In this workshop paper, we enrich an established input component available in any commercial VR controller with appropriate haptic rendering capabilities. As a proof of concept, we present our haptic VR controller Triggermuscle and its adaptive trigger to simulate weight in VR. The trigger dynamically adapts its resistance according to the weight of a grabbed virtual object: The heavier the virtual object, the higher the trigger resistance and the more force users need to apply. Our system is built into the casing of an HTC Vive controller and connects the original trigger component to an extension spring for variable resistance. We envision for the future, that VR input devices can evolve more into input-output technologies and provide meaningful and versatile haptic feedback.