Exploring the effect of using vibrate-type haptic glove in the VR industrial training task

Is it a dream came true for you to experience a Virtual Reality (VR) and be able to touch virtual objects and manipulate them with your bare hands? The recent growth of the Virtual Reality market resulted in an intensification of the development of the haptics gloves technology. The newly haptics gloves, Bebop gloves launched and commercialized recently which will use for this study. Earlier research has explored a range of haptics effects mainly on VR surgery or gaming. Yet, VR industrial training has gradually received attention in recent years. Creating multiple scenarios in the virtual scene is not only cost-effective but also increases safety and reduces training time. However, not many research studies have explored using haptic gloves in the VR industrial training environment. This study tries to complement earlier research by investigating usability and user performance using bebop vibration gloves in VR industrial training. The purposes were to provide a usability review of bebop gloves and explored the effect of haptics in VR industrial training. Three different haptics settings (Non-haptics, Partial haptics, and Full-haptics) were being set up. Eighteen users were then recruited to try randomly two haptics settings. Each user had to complete a five steps VR industrial training task while “thinking aloud”, followed by questionnaires and interviews after the task. The error and time recorded for each training step. These results confirmed several conclusions drawn in earlier research about how the haptics affect user performance in the VR environment, as well as how the behavior changes when using the haptics gloves in a VR environment. Last but not least the results also pointed to the importance of vibration haptics benefits in small-scale actions and provide the user with an interpersonal confirmation.