Cane Walk in the Virtual Reality Space Using Virtual Haptic Sensing: Toward Developing Haptic VR Technologies for the Visually Impaired

Creating a virtual reality (VR) by combining visual information and pseudo touch sensing is studied actively. However, being strictly detached from visual information, it is not easy for visually impaired individuals to sense a visual VR world. The purpose of our study is the development of, so we call, haptic VR technologies for aiding visually impaired individuals sense his (her) surroundings and recognize geometric constructions in the space. Our haptic VR system for the cane walk is installed as follows: in the VR world we put (draw) a cane and a hand with its 5 fingers holding the cane. In real word, we wear a data glove on one hand and this hand is superposed on the virtual hand (this is achieved by each finger being force provided through the data-glove). Thus our VR sensing is created by the pseudo haptic sensing at the fingers for which the feedback forces are provided by the data-glove worn on the hand. In our haptic VR space of cane walk, we have prepared "studded paving blocks" to aid the visually impaired for the pavement, a "cane (white cane)" and a "hand" to grasp and manipulate the cane on the virtual pavement. An actual hand wearing the data-glove on it is superposed on the virtual hand by the system. Thus the touch and investigation on the virtual paving blocks by the cane in the haptic VR space is conveyed to the actual hand via the data-glove. We also show some experimental vibration value and haptic value data obtained at the index finger of the cane grasping hand during the real walking on studded paving blocks and some skin surface voltage of electromyogram (EMG) data.