Using the "origami" technique to achieve tactile perception

2023-06-05

When it comes to the metaverse, perhaps the most intuitive perception for everyone is still a VR glasses that can only visually simulate the real world. But what people didn't expect was that the ancient Eastern handicraft "origami" was the first to achieve a critical breakthrough from virtual to real. The team led by Jiang Hanqing from West Lake University has proposed and developed the "High Fidelity Active Mechanical Touch Interaction System" for the first time internationally, bringing a new dimension of tactile perception to the metaverse. This research result was recently published in Nature Machine Intelligence. Drawing inspiration from the art of origami, the virtual world in VR glasses can not only be visible, audible, but also be "touched". How did all this happen? The distortion of the "universe" that cannot be reached by "touch". The current VR interaction can only provide visual and auditory experiences, presenting a virtual space that can only be viewed from afar but cannot be touched. Researchers have tried many "solutions", mostly creating "passive touch" through vibration or pressure compensation, such as handles with vibration functions and tactile sensing gloves. However, these "tactile sensations" are like a sudden vibration of your phone or a sudden shaking of your seat while sitting in a 4D cinema. Your physical sensations are emitted by the device and give you a passive interactive experience, far from the real "tactile sensations" triggered by human actions in daily life. This also seems to echo the difficult progress bar in human understanding of touch - in 2021, American physiologist David Julius and Armenian American neuroscientist Adm Pataputian won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for unveiling the mystery of touch - while hearing and vision had been revealed as early as the 1960s, winning the Nobel Prize. Leveraging the starry sea of VR world, how can the cutting-edge VR and metaverse be disrupted by traditional origami art? When Jiang Hanqing joined West Lake University in 2021, one of the first projects he started was the research on flexible electronics and soft/hard heterogeneous materials. He first brought the concept of "metamaterial for origami machinery" into the public's view. The so-called "mechanical metamaterial" refers to the material structure that is not naturally formed but artificially constructed. The performance of the material does not depend on the molecular structure or crystal structure itself, but mainly depends on the structural details in its delicate configuration. Having been engaged in "origami research" for ten years and sensing the flourishing development of the metaverse, Jiang Hanqing had the idea of combining the two. Origami materials may be very soft, but depending on different folding methods, the origami structure can become very hard. Robots based on origami structures can adjust the degree of softness and hardness at any time. Breaking away from the inherent mindset of virtual reality interaction, Jiang Hanqing created the new concept of "active touch" - different from the parts of the human body such as the shoulder, chest, waist, and back that typically receive "passive touch", Human hands and feet usually take the initiative to attack and perceive the physical world through active touch. The research team chose to start with "mechanical touch" and simulate the sensation of hands and feet actively touching objects. The research team has developed a "High Fidelity Active Mechanical Touch Interaction System", which uses origami modules of different materials and sizes to build

Edit:qihang    Responsible editor:xinglan

Source:GMW.cn

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