Effects of Force Feedback on VR Keyboards with Different Key Travel Distances

Abstract

Virtual keyboards are important for virtual reality (VR) as they could enable intuitive text input. Although our touch sensation plays an important role in efficient typing, force feedback that could simulate touch sensation for virtual objects has not been used to augment VR keyboards. This was mainly due to the lack of appropriate haptic devices. Additionally, key travel distance is a critical factor in the design of physical keyboards, which greatly affects user typing performance. However, its effects on VR typing, especially in the presence and absence of force feedback, remains unexplored. Therefore, we developed multiple haptic keyboards with different key travel distances and conducted a text entry experiment by employing current state-of-the-art haptic gloves. The results showed that adding force feedback improved typing accuracy and reduced subjective workload. The interaction effects suggested that force feedback was associated with the perception of key travel distances, which modulated user typing performance differently depending on the presence of force feedback. Overall, this study is one of the first to enhance VR keyboards with force feedback and examine its effects with different key travel distances.