Perceiving Mass in Mixed Reality through Pseudo-Haptic Rendering of Newton's Third Law
This addresses the challenge of enhancing mixed reality interactions for users by providing a low-cost, practical solution to mass perception without complex hardware.
The paper tackles the problem of users not being able to perceive the mass of virtual objects in mixed reality due to the lack of reaction forces, and it presents a pseudo-haptic rendering technique that visually simulates Newton's Third Law, enabling users to differentiate light from heavy virtual objects without prior training and measuring a just-noticeable difference in mass.
In mixed reality, real objects can be used to interact with virtual objects. However, unlike in the real world, real objects do not encounter any opposite reaction force when pushing against virtual objects. The lack of reaction force during manipulation prevents users from perceiving the mass of virtual objects. Although this could be addressed by equipping real objects with force-feedback devices, such a solution remains complex and impractical.In this work, we present a technique to produce an illusion of mass without any active force-feedback mechanism. This is achieved by simulating the effects of this reaction force in a purely visual way. A first study demonstrates that our technique indeed allows users to differentiate light virtual objects from heavy virtual objects. In addition, it shows that the illusion is immediately effective, with no prior training. In a second study, we measure the lowest mass difference (JND) that can be perceived with this technique. The effectiveness and ease of implementation of our solution provides an opportunity to enhance mixed reality interaction at no additional cost.