A Virtual Reality Keyboard with Realistic Key Click Haptic Feedback

Virtual Reality (VR) technologies are increasingly used in many engineering and entertainment applications. In order to make users feel more immersed in the VR environments, many studies have focused on enhancing the sensory feedback for the users. Other than visual feedback, haptic feedback has drawn a lot of attention for increasing the realism of the VR environments. This study creates a realistic key click haptic feedback system in a 3D VR environment. The system can be used to create complex vibrations that match measured vibrations from a real keyboard. The system uses immersive 3D stereo displays to render a virtual environment and a virtual keyboard, a finger-wised data glove to track finger motions, and micro-speakers to create low-frequency 50 Hz vibrations for realistic tactile haptic feedback for each finger. When the users press a virtual key, realistic tactile feedback can be provided to the users. Since the virtual keyboard is not anchored on any physical surfaces or objects in the real world, it does not limit the VR workspace. As a result, the haptic VR keyboard can enhance human-computer interactions in an immersive VR environment.