Post-doctoral position ADVHANDTURE project

À propos de nous

INSA Rennes is the largest public engineering school in Brittany. It has 2,040 students and apprentices. More than 340 engineers, 60 Master’s students and 40 PhD students graduate from the institution each year. Comprising nine academic departments, eight engineering specialisms (including two through apprenticeship programmes), and overseeing seven research laboratories, INSA employs around 540 public sector staff (research lecturers, lecturers, and BIATSS staff) and over 70 part-time staff from the private sector.

Mission

Context: ADVHANDTURE project

These last years have seen an explosion of novel tactile technologies providing various haptic sensations across all the user’s body. However, while these technologies have now been made available, virtual reality systems are still struggling to convey compelling tactile sensations for 3D interaction. The project ADVHANDTURE aims at introducing an original computational approach for handling multimodal tactile feedback within immersive environments. For that purpose, the project relies on a multidisciplinary methodology, gathering knowledge in human perception, haptics, virtual reality, mechanics and 3D interactions.

Description of the post-doctoral position

Within the context of ADVHANDTURE, the goal of the post-doctoral student is to design 3D interaction techniques for interacting with deformable surfaces in mixed reality. The main scientific question relies on the combination of tactile stimuli within the hand. For that purpose, the main objective of the post-doctoral student is to study how we can improve the interaction with mixed reality environments composed of deformable surfaces by taking the best of two simple haptic solutions: tangible objects and wearable haptics. Tangible objects will simulate the global and distributed shape/percept of the virtual/augmented object, while wearable haptics will dynamically change its physical properties.

The Post-doc will start with the analysis of the literature. We will then proceed by developing four main key aspects:

1) study the perceptual interaction and conflicts between vision and haptics when interacting with passive deformable surfaces in mixed reality,

2) design 3D interaction techniques combining the capabilities of wearable haptics and tangible objects for mixed reality, addressing the known limitations of the proposed system (e.g. under-actuation, visual occlusion),

3) develop use cases augmenting the physical properties of the deformable surfaces through wearable haptics and mixed reality,

4) evaluate the performance and user experience of the proposed 3D interaction on users.

References

● Cabaret, PA et al. (2023). Does Multi-Actuator Vibrotactile Feedback Within Tangible Objects Enrich VR Manipulation?, IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, doi: 10.1109/TVCG.2023.3279398.

● Cabaret, PA et al. (2022). Perception of Spatialized Vibrotactile Impacts in a Hand-Held Tangible for Virtual Reality. In: Seifi, H., et al. Haptics: Science, Technology, Applications. EuroHaptics 2022. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 13235. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-06249-0_30

● Vizcay, Sebastian et al. (2022). Design and Evaluation of Electrotactile Rendering Effects for Finger-Based Interactions in Virtual Reality. In Proceedings of the 28th ACM Symposium on Virtual Reality Software and Technology (VRST '22). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 35, 1–11.

● Salazar, Steeven Villa, et al. (2020). Altering the stiffness, friction, and shape perception of tangible objects in virtual reality using wearable haptics. IEEE Transactions on Haptics 13.1 (2020): 167-174.

● Normand, Erwan et al. (2024). Visuo-Haptic Rendering of the Hand during 3D Manipulation in Augmented Reality. IEEE Transactions on Haptics.

● Normand, Erwan et al. (2024). Augmenting the Texture Perception of Tangible Surfaces in Augmented Reality using Vibrotactile Haptics. In Proceedings of Eurohaptics.

Profil

Skills/requirements

The applicant should have a strong interest in working in a multidisciplinary team. Ideally, she/he has an experience in virtual reality/mixed reality/augmented reality domain:

● knowledge on signal processing and electronics;

● skills in computer science, C/C++ coding;

● strong experience in using VR/AR tools and software.

● Familiarity with computer graphics, 3D printing and haptics;

The student should be able to speak and write in English.