HexTouch

HexTouch is a research experiment that aims to improve the emotional expressiveness of the robot. A tangible interface is constructed to perform haptic stimulations for primary emotions through a series of machine tactors (tactile organs).

 
 

Emotional

VR Controller

 

Hextouch is an experiment project to explore robot’s emotional expression through touch. We chose Virtual Reality as a way to demonstrate because immersive game and controller can be well related in Virtual Reality so that we can better test people’s reaction to robot’s touch expressions.

My Contribution

 

As the Unity Developer for this research project, I was responsible for engineering the core VR application and connecting it with external hardware components.

  • Engineered the complete VR gameplay experience, including player locomotion and all interactive environment elements.

  • Integrated custom Arduino hardware inputs to reliably synchronize physical haptic feedback with in-game triggers.

  • Programmed a five-stage interactive environment where players explore a dark virtual valley alongside a robotic companion.

  • Developed custom mechanics for the robot to act as a dynamic light source and trigger synchronized in-game animations and physical touch feedback.

  • Structured the game's narrative progression, building toward a final sequence where players illuminate the environment and return the robot to a central portal.

Publication

Ran Zhou, Yanzhe Wu and Harpreet Sareen. 2020. HexTouch: A Wearable Haptic Robot for Complementary Interactions to Companion Agents in Virtual Reality. In SIGGRAPH Asia 2020 Emerging Technologies (SA ’20)

Ran Zhou, Yanzhe Wu and Harpreet Sareen. 2020. HexTouch: Affective Robot Touch for Complementary Interactions to Companion Agents in Virtual Reality. In 26th ACM Symposium on Virtual Reality Software and Technology (VRST '20) Best Demo Award