Active Mechanical Haptics Constructed with Curved Origami

A touchable virtual environment, beyond just visual and auditory information generated from virtual/augmented reality (VR/AR) devices, can create more immersive experiences for the users in the first-person perspective, though the present mechanical haptics are realized by machine-triggered vibrations or motion constraints, still in the third person. A human-centered and triggered mechanical sensory perception through actively touching natural objects to feel their existence and basic properties (e.g. stiffness or hardness) is the way we immerse ourselves in nature. Consequently, the replication of the active sensory perception can achieve authentic haptic experiences. Here we present first-person, human-triggered haptics that allow users to actively experience mechanical touching with various stiffness perceptions from positive to negative, achieved by curved origami, which can be synchronized with the virtual environment to change its stiffness to reflect various interaction scenarios by emulating body-centered touch feelings of hardness, softness, crushing, and weightlessness, thus connecting the virtual environments with actual perceptions in the natural world and achieving "what a user sees is what the user feels." Quantitative evaluations based on participants' physiological and psychological responses demonstrate the present active haptic device can create a highly immersive virtual environment with high-fidelity stiffness perceptions. These concepts and resulting technologies create new opportunities and application potentials via mechanical designs and materials for a more authentic virtual world.