Implementation of Two-Point Control System in SPIDAR-HS for the Rod Tracking Task in Virtual Reality Environment.

The purpose of this paper is to elucidate the contribution of haptic and visual sense to the sense of embodiment (SoE) in the virtual reality (VR) environment by physiological behavior measurement. To achieve the goal, we employed a rod tracking task which passes the rod held in hand in the sinusoidal path. However, there was some problem with the VR system. There is an unstable rotation of an end effector from its shape, as well as the misdirected force resulting from this rotation. In order to solve these problems, we implemented a two-point haptic system and constructed an application that efficiently performs the rod tracking task. In the evaluation of the experimental environment, the device accuracy measurement in the workspace and the experimental environment evaluation via physiological behavior measurement was conducted. The experimental environment evaluation via physiological behavior measurement was conducted by measuring the myoelectric potential and subjective evaluation questionnaire in the rod tracking task. The evaluation results revealed that the device accuracy is not impressive in the workspace; the performance significantly decreased in the VR environment compared to the real environment. In future research, we shall consider how to improve device accuracy, introduced a chroma key technology, development of a haptic model, to mention a few. Besides, we shall create an environment that can execute tasks for establishing SoE.