Abstract
Touch is fundamental to create our perception of reality and to allow fulfilling social experiences, such as those at the basis of metaverses. In order to be accurately reproduced, a number of scientific and technological aspects should be considered. In this chapter, the authors highlight the relevance of the tactile modality in eliciting ‘presence' in virtual reality interactions. They also discuss the neuroscientific foundation of our bodily interactions and the fact that they are based on a number of receptors and neural circuits that contribute to the complexity of our perceptions. The available technological devices for the reproduction of touch in virtual environments and their limitations are also described. They suggest that virtual interactions should include more of this sensory modality and that attempts should be made to go beyond the actual approach to ‘mimicking reality'. In particular, future simulations should consider the perspective of creative ‘hyper-sensations' including ‘hyper-touch' on the basis of our psychological and neuroscientific knowledge.
TopIntroduction
The technological advances of the last few decades have allowed virtual and augmented reality to enter people's lives for the first time. Most recently, the term 'metaverse' (taken from the 1992 sci-fi novel “Snow Crash” by Neal Stephenson), referred to virtual worlds shared over the internet, would seem more popular than ever before and millions of dollars are invested into its development (Kye, Han, Kim, Park, & Jo, 2021; Gallace, 2022). The success of companies such as Oculus (now Meta) or HTC certainly testifies this growing interest in the world of virtuality. As a matter of fact, these technological devices are certainly not 'new' and virtual reality has experienced several 'waves' of popularity from the 1960s to our days. It seems almost prehistoric to think about Morton Helig's ‘Sensorama’, dating back to 1957, one of the first commercial attempt to simulate an hedonic/pleasant complex experience (i.e. the first flight simulators for military purposes were implemented between the 1910s and 1930s), such as driving a motorcycle. Interestingly, these early examples of virtual reality already embedded some form of tactile stimulation in the experience. That is, since the very beginning of virtual reality it was very clear that the world had to be simulated taking into account all sensory modalities that our brain can process, in order to be perceived as a fulfilling and enjoyable experience. This trend never stopped since then, even if the available technologies and scientific knowledge somehow affected its speed.
The popular way in which most people today think about virtual reality is through headsets (devices that can be worn on a person face, as a sort of heavy pair of glasses) and their hand controllers. From this perspective, the Sutherland's ‘Sword of Damocles’, one of the first head mounted display anchored to the ceiling due to its weight and dated back to 1968, might look now to most people as a peculiar experimental attempt to create wearable displays, from a bygone era. However, once again such device and many others not mentioned here, although still embryonic, have certainly laid the foundations for ‘portable’ virtual reality as we know it today. Even the interfaces developed by VPL research (the company founded by Jaron Lanier, considered one of the fathers of Virtual Reality) at the dawn of the 80s - including headsets, whole body suits and haptic gloves - were strikingly similar, at least in their basic operating principles, to those available nowadays (Lanier, 2017)! However, if the technological and theoretical systems at the foundation of VR were already well underway in the 80s, why after more than 50 years from the first studies in this field, we still don't use these technologies as an integral part of our daily activities?
Key Terms in this Chapter
Quantomechanic: A description of the physical properties of nature at the scale of atoms and subatomic particles.
Avatar: The embodiment of a person within a digital/virtual representation.
Somatosensory Cortex: THE area of the brain, responsible for the processing of information provided by tactile receptors. It contains a complete—although distorted—representation of the entire body surface, known as ‘homunculus’, with a point-to-point correspondence to actual body parts.
Haptics: The perception of objects by touch and proprioception, involves sensory processing and body movement.
Autonomic Nervous System: Is a component of the peripheral nervous system that regulates involuntary physiologic processes, such as heart rate, blood pressure, skin sweating, respiration, and arousal.
Cortex: The outer layer of the brain, composed of folded grey matter.
Realism: The idea that nature exists independently of man's mind.
Psychophysics: The branch of psychology that investigates the relations between physical stimuli and mental phenomena.
Digital Twin: A virtual representation that serves as the digital counterpart of a physical object or process.