Haptic display for virtual reality: progress and challenges

TLDR

Virtual reality relies on immersion, interaction, and imagination, yet current systems provide realistic visual and auditory feedback but lack haptic capabilities, which haptic displays aim to bridge by enabling bilateral communication between humans and computers. This survey examines the 30‑year evolution of haptic displays, categorizing them into desktop, surface, and wearable stages, and identifies future research challenges for handheld, multimodal, and high‑fidelity haptic rendering. The authors critically review the driving forces, key technologies, and typical applications that characterize each of the three haptic display stages. The study emphasizes that understanding human haptic perception is essential for designing effective haptic devices.

Abstract

Immersion, interaction, and imagination are three features of virtual reality (VR). Existing VR systems possess fairly realistic visual and auditory feedbacks, and however, are poor with haptic feedback, by means of which human can perceive the physical world via abundant haptic properties. Haptic display is an interface aiming to enable bilateral signal communications between human and computer, and thus to greatly enhance the immersion and interaction of VR systems. This paper surveys the paradigm shift of haptic display occurred in the past 30 years, which is classified into three stages, including desktop haptics, surface haptics, and wearable haptics. The driving forces, key technologies and typical applications in each stage are critically reviewed. Toward the future high-fidelity VR interaction, research challenges are highlighted concerning handheld haptic device, multimodal haptic device, and high fidelity haptic rendering. In the end, the importance of understanding human haptic perception for designing effective haptic devices is addressed.