Evaluation of pseudo-haptic interfaces for perceiving virtual weights

A task of lifting a virtual object is widely executed in Virtual Reality (VR) environments. If users could experience the lifting task with more realistic perception of virtual weight, their senses of presence in a VR environment would greatly improve. 'Force Arrow' is a pseudo-haptic interface for improving the virtual weight perception. It has been proposed and extended. It was proposed to create a cognitive illusion of virtual weights to a user who performed tasks of lifting virtual dumbbells with visual guidance. The user was guided to control velocity and force to perform the lifting tasks while experiencing the virtual weights of the dumbbells. It has been extended with another visual guidance by changing the sizes of the virtual dumbbells when their virtual weights are changed. The extended interface was called as 'Force Arrow 2'. The two pseudo-haptic interfaces were compared in terms of their effects of generating the virtual weights and the usability. The experimental results showed that the Force Arrow 2 interface guided its users during the lifting tasks more effectively than its previous version.