Team
Bio:
Nick Wittig is a research assistant at the Human-Computer Interaction Group of the University of Duisburg-Essen. Currently, he is researching the field of "Augmented Reality in Education" within the project "FederLeicht".
Publications:
- Faltaous, Sarah; Prochazka, Marvin; Auda, Jonas; Keppel, Jonas; Wittig, Nick; Gruenefeld, Uwe; Schneegass, Stefan: Give Weight to VR: Manipulating Users’ Perception of Weight in Virtual Reality with Electric Muscle Stimulation, Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA 2022. (ISBN 9781450396905) doi:10.1145/3543758.3547571) CitationAbstractDetails
Virtual Reality (VR) devices empower users to experience virtual worlds through rich visual and auditory sensations. However, believable haptic feedback that communicates the physical properties of virtual objects, such as their weight, is still unsolved in VR. The current trend towards hand tracking-based interactions, neglecting the typical controllers, further amplifies this problem. Hence, in this work, we investigate the combination of passive haptics and electric muscle stimulation to manipulate users’ perception of weight, and thus, simulate objects with different weights. In a laboratory user study, we investigate four differing electrode placements, stimulating different muscles, to determine which muscle results in the most potent perception of weight with the highest comfort. We found that actuating the biceps brachii or the triceps brachii muscles increased the weight perception of the users. Our findings lay the foundation for future investigations on weight perception in VR.
- Grünefeld, Uwe; Geilen, Alexander; Liebers, Jonathan; Wittig, Nick; Koelle, Marion; Schneegass, Stefan: ARm Haptics: 3D-Printed Wearable Haptics for Mobile Augmented Reality. In: Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact., Vol 6 (2022). doi:10.1145/3546728CitationAbstractDetails
Augmented Reality (AR) technology enables users to superpose virtual content onto their environments. However, interacting with virtual content while mobile often requires users to perform interactions in mid-air, resulting in a lack of haptic feedback. Hence, in this work, we present the ARm Haptics system, which is worn on the user's forearm and provides 3D-printed input modules, each representing well-known interaction components such as buttons, sliders, and rotary knobs. These modules can be changed quickly, thus allowing users to adapt them to their current use case. After an iterative development of our system, which involved a focus group with HCI researchers, we conducted a user study to compare the ARm Haptics system to hand-tracking-based interaction in mid-air (baseline). Our findings show that using our system results in significantly lower error rates for slider and rotary input. Moreover, use of the ARm Haptics system results in significantly higher pragmatic quality and lower effort, frustration, and physical demand. Following our findings, we discuss opportunities for haptics worn on the forearm.
- Saad, Alia; Wittig, Nick; Grünefeld, Uwe; Schneegass, Stefan: A Systematic Analysis of External Factors Affecting Gait Identification. . CitationAbstractDetails