A fully immersive VR-based haptic feedback system for size measurement in inspection tasks using 3D point clouds

This paper proposes a size measurement system to be used in inspection tasks, based on the integration of fully immersive Virtual Reality visualization and haptic feedback at fingertip level. In particular, index finger and thumb are intuitively used to perform metric measurement on 3D point clouds visualized using a stereo vision Head Mounted Display. The haptic feedback consisting of contact transition and forces rendered at the fingertip is used to facilitate the user in the measurement task. Experimental results show similar performance of subjects in accomplishing the inspection task with and without the support of haptic feedback in terms of time and precision of measurements. However, qualitative questionnaire responses suggest a significant preference of subjects in using immersive environment enriched by haptic feedback.