Finger Tendon Vibration: Finger Movement Illusions for Immersive Virtual Object Interaction

2026-02-09

AI Summary

This work addresses the lack of physical feedback in hand-object interactions within virtual reality, which diminishes immersion and realism. To simulate proprioceptive feedback, the authors propose using finger tendon vibration (FTV) to elicit kinesthetic illusions. They introduce the first application of brief FTV stimuli to generate realistic sensations of finger resistance and establish a design space along with haptic rendering strategies tailored for VR object interactions. Through perceptual experiments and multi-scenario system evaluations, the approach demonstrates significant improvements over both no-vibration and conventional vibration baselines in conveying resistance perception and enhancing body ownership. These findings establish FTV as a novel paradigm for haptic feedback in virtual reality.

Technology Category

• Humans and AI: Interaction Techniques and Devices
• Computer Vision: Low Level & Physics-based Vision
• Intelligent Robots: Manipulation

Application Category

• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: User modeling and simulation for interactive and conversational systems
• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Virtualization and resource management in Web systems and infrastructures
• Responsible Web: Machine-in-the-loop, human agency and autonomy

Abstract

The absence of physical information during hand-object interaction in a virtual environment diminishes realism and immersion. Kinesthetic haptic feedback has proven effective in delivering realistic object-derived haptic cues, enhancing the overall virtual reality (VR) experience. Here, we propose kinesthetic illusion through a novel application of finger tendon vibration (FTV), which creates an illusory sensation of finger movement. To effectively apply FTV for virtual object interactions, we first examine the effects of short-duration FTV (<5 s) through 3 perception studies. Based on study results, we design 6 exemplary VR scenarios, representing the overall design space of VR object interactions, and 4 different haptic rendering strategies for FTV. We evaluated these rendering methods on each VR scenario and derived a design guideline for FTV application. We then compared FTV with no vibration and simple vibration, observing that FTV enhances VR experience by providing realistic resistance on the finger, greatly improving body ownership.

Problem

• virtual reality
• haptic feedback
• immersion
• kinesthetic illusion
• finger interaction

Innovation

• finger tendon vibration
• kinesthetic illusion
• haptic feedback
• virtual reality
• body ownership