The entertainment industry, including cinema and video games, has used haptic technologies for over 50 years, demonstrating their benefits in terms of user experience and immersion. The term haptics encompasses touch-based technologies (vibrotactile, electrotactile, and mid-air haptics), force feedback (kinaesthetic), and thermal technologies. However, the hardware and maintenance costs associated with these devices remain very high, which hinders their widespread adoption. More recently, numerous manufacturers have introduced new haptic devices to enhance the user experience at a lower cost. Examples include Sony with the DualSense controller, Apple with the F1 trailer featuring haptic feedback, Razer with its new range of haptic products, and, more broadly, the development of the new MPEG-I standard for defining haptic formats. As part of this effort to innovate and democratize haptic technologies, we aim to investigate new forms of interaction involving haptic feedback for immersive media such as cinema and gaming. This project focuses on multimodal interactions, i.e., interactions that integrate several types of user feedback (audio, visual, and haptic), as well as on the impact of these interactions on the user’s haptic experience (UX and HUX) and engagement. The project’s initial user studies have already identified the most relevant haptic rendering methods in terms of haptic experience in the context of animated short films. Moreover, a first internship related to this project led to the development of an asymmetric collaborative game in which two players must communicate through multimodal cues to solve several puzzles. One player uses virtual reality, while the other uses a standard PC. This open-source multiplayer game will serve as the basis for developing small scenarios designed to evaluate collaboration through multimodal interactions.
The activities of the Immersive Natural User Interaction Team (INUIT) focus on the Study collaboration, interaction and user perception in XR applications and Autonomous Systems.
The intern will be expected to propose and implement haptic rendering methods to improve the collaboration between players. The intern will therefore extend the current game and develop additional game levels and game mechanics. Task and duties entrusted to the student :
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