Haptics in the metaverse: Haptic feedback for Virtual, Augmented, Mixed, and eXtended Realities

Haptic sensations are a fundamental component of the user’s immersive experience when interacting in Virtual/Augmented/Mixed/eXtended Realities (VR/AR/MR/XR). In the last few years, we have witnessed the rapid development of many innovative devices and original techniques for providing haptic sensations, e.g., using force feedback, mid-air interfaces, props, or exploiting perceptual phenomena with cross-modal effects such as pseudo-haptics. While increasingly immersive and realistic experiences have developed at a fast pace, the emergence of a metaverse proposes new use cases where prolonged utilisation and social interactions become more frequent and effective than reality. This change in direction presents the haptics community with new challenges and opportunities. To that end, the goal of this Special Issue is to present innovative cutaneous and tactile technologies as well as their use towards the metaverse vision.

• design consideration and evaluation of tactile haptic interfaces for VR/AR/MR/XR, specifically wearable and hand-held tactile devices;
• rendering and methods for tactile interaction in VR/AR/MR/XR;
• perceptual, behavioural, and cognitive studies on how tactile haptics can improve or alter human interaction, participation, training performances, immersion, or sense of presence in VR/AR/MR/XR;
• studies on tactile haptics investigating human perception, cognition, attention, new human-computer interaction paradigms, and user interface design and experience (UIX) during interactions in VR/AR/MR/XR;
• biometric sensing, such as GSR, eye-tracking, EEG, EMG, and heart rate, and other measurements for assessing objective and subjective performance metrics in VR/AR/MR/XR;
• use cases and applications of tactile haptics in VR/AR/MR/XR;
• computational modelling, analysis and data-driven evaluations of haptic interactions in VR/AR/MR/XR.

If you are unsure whether your topic of research fits the scope of this Special Issue, please contact the Guest Editors indicated below.