To Touch VR

VR goggles allow us to perceive virtual reality using sight, hearing, and sense of balance, but how to immerse ourselves even deeper into the virtual world by complementing these senses with touch? This question was asked by students of the Silesian University of Technology, who developed a tactical glove that allows users to feel virtual elements. Another group working on this project went a step further and created an engineering VR game.

You are a member of a crew that flies to Mars. Unfortunately, your spaceship suffers an accident and in order to get out of the oppression you have to fix it – this is an outline of the game plot created entirely by students of Mechatronics at the Silesian University of Technology. The player must show off not only his dexterity, but also basic engineering knowledge to properly fix all the broken spacecraft systems. On the head - VR goggles, on the hand - a special tactical glove, a prototype, which was created thanks to the work of two teams of students, as part of two editions of Project Based Learning projects.

– I did not expect that the effect would be so impressive – Dr Eng. Paweł Kowol from the Department of Mechatronics of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, the supervisor and originator of the first project cannot stop praising his pupils. – This is the third PBL project on this topic. The first team developed the tactical part of the glove, the second translated the movement of fingers into contact with VR – these were the beginnings of a virtual environment. The current team focused on developing aspects related to virtual reality.

The students began with a brainstorming session, during which they agreed that by controlling the tactical glove they would lay mechatronic blocks in a virtual world, which would allow to show the operation of the glove and the fact that thanks to it one can feel individual virtual elements. However, the ambitious group quickly came to the conclusion that their idea would be enriched by the story layer and thus the idea of a mission to Mars was born. Young people began to create their own game, using not only theoretical knowledge, but also developing their previous interests.

– I have been interested for a long time in how games are made, so the tool we used, the Unity engine, was already quite well known to me – says Paweł Misztal in the game design team. – We decided to use the Low poly style, which is quite simple, and what is more, some ready-made models can be purchased online. We used one such set to build our spacecraft. We expanded the game ourselves by adding new elements and mechanics that we wanted to implement in the game.

The result of the students’ work is a full-fledged VR game, which could be successfully placed, for example on a Steam service. To control the game, instead of a pad, a tactical glove is used, that is, engaging touch in the perception of virtual reality.

– The glove allows the user to touch virtual reality, the elements of which are not only observable, but become tangible – explains Dr Eng. Pawel Kowol. – When we grab something in virtual reality, the locking system in the tweezer grip blocks the index finger and thumb at some point and we feel resistance. Under the fingertips there are cushions with magnetorheological liquid, changing its viscosity in the magnetic field, thanks to which we feel a change in hardness when gripping. The combination of the finger stop system with the magnetorheological liquid excitation system is an innovative solution.