These last years have seen an explosion of novel tactile technologies providing various haptic sensations across all the user’s body. However, while these technologies have now been made available, virtual reality systems are still struggling to convey compelling tactile sensations for 3D interaction. The project ADVHANDTURE aims at introducing an original computational approach for handling multimodal tactile feedback within immersive environments. For that purpose, the project relies on a multidisciplinary methodology, gathering knowledge in human perception, haptics, virtual reality, mechanics and 3D interactions.

PHD Topic
Within the context of ADVHANDTURE, the goal of the PhD is to design 3D interaction techniques for interacting with deformable surfaces in mixed reality. The main scientific question relies on the combination of tactile stimuli within the hand. For that purpose, the main objective of the PhD is to study how we can improve the interaction with mixed reality environments composed of deformable surfaces by taking the best of two simple haptic solutions: tangible objects and wearable haptics. Tangible objects will simulate the global and distributed shape/percept of the virtual/augmented object, while wearable haptics will dynamically change its physical properties.