RedirectedDoors+ Puts Door Handles on Robots for Better VR — While Keeping Its Users Contained

Researchers at Tohoku University, the University of Bergen, and Chalmers University of Technology have come up with a way to make opening doors in virtual reality more realistic — by building real reality robotic door handles that can reposition themselves as-required.

"Our system, which built upon an existing visuo-haptic door-opening redirection technique, allows participants to subtly manipulate the walking direction while opening doors in VR, guiding them away from real walls," Kazayuki Fujita, Tohoku University professor and project co-lead, explains of the benefit of movable door-handles. "At the same time, our system reproduces the realistic haptics of touching a doorknob, enhancing the quality of the experience."

The RedirectedDoors+ system works by putting a physical doorknob atop a mobile robot, capable of moving anywhere in the real world. As the user approaches a door in the virtual world, the robot positions itself ready to be "opened" — and by controlling the position carefully and rotating the virtual world as the door opens it's possible to make the user think they're passing through a series of rooms in a straight line while they're actually walking in circles around a single room.

"RedirectDoors+ has redefined the boundaries of VR exploration, offering unprecedented freedom and realism in virtual environments," Fujita claims of the potential for the system. "It has a wide range of applicability, such as in VR vocational training, architectural design, and urban planning."

Based on a 12-person study, the RedirectedDoors+ system appears to deliver on its promises: users received the haptic feedback of feeling a real door handle in their hand and the sensation of pushing or pulling it open, while also being redirected such that they remained within a relatively small play area considerably more compact than the virtual world they were navigating.

The team's work has been published under open-access terms in the journal IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics.