Exploring Multiplayer Haptics using a Wrist-Worn Interface for Pneumatic Inflatables

This thesis explores the development and integration of a wrist-worn pneumatic haptic interface, Pneutouch, into multiplayer virtual reality (VR) environments. The study investigates the impact of haptics on multiplayer experiences, with a specific focus on presence, collaboration, and communication. Evaluation and investigation were performed using three mini-games, each targeting specific interactions and investigating presence, collaboration, and communication. It was found that haptics enhanced user presence and object realism, increased user seriousness towards tasks, and shifted the focus of interactions from user-user to user-object. In collaborative tasks, haptics increased realism but did not improve efficiency for simple tasks. In communication tasks, a unique interaction modality, termed "haptic mirroring," was introduced, which explored a new form of communication that could be implemented with haptic devices. It was found that with new communication modalities, users experience an associated learning curve. Together, these findings suggest a new set of multiplayer haptic design considerations, such as how haptics increase seriousness, shift focus from social to physical interactions, generally increase realism but decrease task efficiency, and have associated learning curves. These findings contribute to the growing body of research on haptics in VR, particularly in multiplayer settings, and provide insights that can be further investigated or utilized in the implementation of VR experiences.