Mechanical backpacks can slide weights up and down to enhance the sensation of jumping and falling in virtual reality.
Simulating physical forces in virtual reality (VR), such as those experienced on roller coasters and racing cars, often requires bulky and expensive hardware that is not suitable for home use.
Instead, Pedro Lopez and his colleagues at the University of Chicago developed a backpack called the JumpMod. By altering the user’s sense of vertical momentum, the backpack can create the feeling of being pulled up or down. “You can play a lot of tricks just by playing with your perception rather than physically having these massive infrastructures,” he says.
To trick the brain, JumpMod senses the need to give the sensation of jumping or falling within milliseconds, and quickly moves a 2-kilogram weight up and down to accomplish this.
Lopez and his colleagues used the device to create various effects in VR simulations. In one part of the game, players collected tokens that allowed them to jump higher, allowing them to jump over cows. The JumpMod made the player feel like they were jumping higher by moving the weight up as they were lifting off the ground.
In another scenario, the player had to break the pumpkin by jumping over it. By lowering the weight as the player descends, the JumpMod made the landing feel more forceful.
At the end of the game, the player is lifted off the ground by a bird. The weight of the backpack shifts down giving the feeling of being lifted up.
Lopez presented the work at the conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in Hamburg, Germany on April 24th. He says the system could also be used to train people to jump more effectively through physical feedback.
While this is a novel VR accessory, it would be good to see long-term data on its use to rule out the effects of novelty in early research, says Brendan Walker of Middlesex University in London. increase. It can also be designed more ergonomically, he says, so that all the force is not on the rucksack straps.
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