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本文:
A student YouTuber by the name of Lucas VRTech has designed and 3D printed a
pair of low-cost finger tracking gloves for use in virtual reality.
Named LucidVR, the open-source gloves are currently on iteration three, and
grant users the ability to precisely track their fingers without the use of
dedicated VR controllers. Lucas is currently in the process of adding haptic
feedback to the gloves, meaning they will enable users to feel virtual
objects as if they were really in their hands.
Tallying up all of the component and filament costs, the LucidVR project cost
Lucas just $22 ($11 per hand). The devices have already been tested in a
number of VR games such as Half Life Alyx and Pavlov VR, and they work like a
charm.
Lucas, referring to the upcoming fourth iteration, explains, “The VR haptic
glove I’m working toward creating is going to have both finger tracking and
haptics, so that you can pick up an object and feel it in your hand.”
VR haptic gloves: a toy for the wealthy
The ability to pick a virtual object up and really feel it in the palm of
your hand is the next step towards full immersion in VR. Companies such as
VRgluv and HaptX are already in the process of developing such devices, but
high costs make these products inaccessible to the average consumer. As such,
they are often only used by enterprises for VR-based training purposes,
rather than gaming and other recreational activities.
Lucas adds, “I’m obsessed with VR myself, and I really wanted that
experience so I decided to just try to build some VR gloves on my own. This
started as just a fun project for me to work on by myself but now it’s
become a mission for me to help make VR haptic gloves affordable for the
average consumer.”
How do they work?
There are a few different ways of tracking finger movements, but the simplest
and most cost-effective way is to use strings. By attaching strings to your
fingertips with 3D printed rings and finger caps, you can measure just how
far a string is pulled, which can be translated to fist clenches and finger
extensions. When it comes to haptic feedback, strings can also be used to
pull back on your fingers, simulating the force of an object in your hand.
To measure these string pulls, Lucas used a potentiometer – the same thing
you’d find under the volume knob of an electric guitar. Potentiometers
change their electrical resistances based on how far the knob is turned, so
they can be used to map these resistances to string pulls caused by finger
movements.
The next step was to provide a counter-force for the fingers, to ensure the
strings were always under constant tension and retracted back when the fists
weren’t clenched. For this, Lucas quite simply used a set of retractable ID
badge reels, which he found online for 30 cents each.
To tie it all together, the gloves are powered by a small Arduino
microcontroller running a Python program. The program, developed by Lucas
himself, takes the data from the potentiometers and translates it to a pair
of virtual hands in VR. To track the position of the hands themselves,
including their rotations, users can either use the cameras of an Oculus
Quest 2 or additional accessories like a VIVE Tracker.
Projects like LucidVR are what keep the open-source community alive and
kicking in 3D printing. Last year, open-source 3D printing designer Johan Von
Konow unveiled his own DIY project, a modular 3D printable MIDI synth. The
LEET Synthesizer, as it’s called, is a fun project that can be built for a
grand total of $6.
Elsewhere, a team of software engineers have previously released an
open-source AI software that automatically pauses failed FDM prints. The
Spaghetti Detective utilizes the webcam of a printer or home computer to
detect when a print job has gone wrong and started extruding ‘spaghetti’,
interrupting the process and alerting the user through an email or text
message.
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心得:
3D列印 + 技術開源，支援Oculus2跟Vive體系，不知道有沒有人想嘗試看看，
當然如果產品化大概不會是這價錢，但只要沒比現在控制器貴上太多應該都會有需求。