FacePush: experiencing pressure forces on face with HMDs

Simulated haptics is a key component to enhance immersion in virtual environments. Previous research has proposed various mechanisms to generate different haptic feedbacks. While many were deployed on limbs e.g., through wearable interfaces or handheld controllers, recent researches started to explore displaying haptics directly through HMDs. Examples include thermal [Peiris et al. 2017], vibrotactile [de Jesus Oliveira et al. 2017] and force [Gugenheimer et al. 2016] feedbacks. We present FacePush, a pulley system incorporated with a HMD to display pressure forces on user face. Unlike GyroVR [Gugenheimer et al. 2016] which enabled tangential/rotational force on user head, FacePush's pulley system creates normal force on the face region covered by the HMD. The main concept of FacePush is shifting torque provided by the two motors to a normal force pushing on face. As displayed in Figure 1. This normal force triggered by the motors pushes the HMD into user face resulting in pressure feedbacks on the face.