Chapter 8: Haptic VR and Haptic Telexistence

Haptic means “of or relating to the sense of active touch, in particular relating to the perception and manipulation of objects using both cutaneous sensation and proprioception.” Although ideal virtual reality (VR) and telexistence should provide haptic sensations, conventional VR and telexistence systems provide mostly visual and auditory sensations with, at most, only incomplete haptic sensations. Some systems have proprioception, such as kinesthetic sensation, but do not have cutaneous sensation that is as natural as direct touch. For this reason, many researchers are now studying haptic sensation worldwide. For the same reason, this chapter is entitled “Haptic VR and Haptic Telexistence,” to stress the importance of haptic sensation in VR and telexistence.