UnrealHaptics-MC: Low-Latency Multi-contact Haptics for VR

Research output: Contribution to book/Conference proceedings/Anthology/Report › Conference contribution › Contributed › peer-review

Contributors

Abstract

Using (and developing) haptic devices in virtual reality applications is currently impeded by the lack of flexible haptic rendering software frameworks that support haptic devices with varying numbers of interaction points. The existing open-source framework Chai3D supports primarily haptic devices with single contact points. Game engines are capable of rendering complex scenes, but typically operate at frame rates much lower than 1000 Hz, the update rate required for haptic rendering loops. We present an Unreal Engine-based extension of the UnrealHaptics framework that generalizes the prior single-contact device layer to peripherals with multiple contact points (multi-contact). The work preserves the established high-frequency haptic loop and adapts the framework to Unreal Engine 5 through a generalized device interface and component-based design. The resulting system supports heterogeneous haptic peripherals by exchanging per-contact pose data and six degrees-of-freedom force vectors. We propose a multi-contact performance benchmark and use it to validate our software architecture with two novel haptic peripherals with different numbers of contact points. Also, we propose a novel measurement method for software and hardware latencies, using audio; to quantify the effective visuo-haptic synchronicity of any software-hardware system. We show that our implementation enables fast, efficient, synchronous visuo-haptic rendering, with the haptic loop achieving a 1000 Hz update rate. Also, we demonstrate that our novel measurement method is capable of revealing the bottlenecks (here hardware) of the overall system performance. We also make our framework openly available, aiming at accelerating the development and adoption of haptic interfaces for virtual reality applications.

Details

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationHaptics: Understanding Touch; Technology and Systems; Applications and Interaction
EditorsClaudio Pacchierotti, Karon E. MacLean, Jan B.F. van Erp
PublisherSpringer Science and Business Media B.V.
Pages493-512
Number of pages20
ISBN (electronic)978-3-032-32350-7
ISBN (print)978-3-032-32349-1
Publication statusE-pub ahead of print - Jul 2026
Peer-reviewedYes

Publication series

SeriesLecture Notes in Computer Science
Volume16594 LNCS
ISSN0302-9743

Conference

Title15th International Conference on Human Haptic Sensing and Touch Enabled Computer Applications
Abbreviated titleEuroHaptics 2026
Conference number15
Duration6 - 9 July 2026
Website
LocationUniversità degli Studi di Siena
CitySiena
CountryItaly

External IDs

ORCID /0000-0002-0803-8818/work/228231696
ORCID /0000-0003-4166-1254/work/228235086
ORCID /0000-0002-3496-441X/work/228235125

Keywords

Keywords

  • Collision detection, Haptic devices, Haptic rendering, Latency measurement, Software architecture, Virtual reality