Overview

HAPTEX ("HAPtic sensing of virtual TEXtiles") is a visionary research project on multimodal perception of textiles in virtual environments, funded by the European Union in the scope of the 6th Framework Program (IST Programme, FET Programme.

The final goal of this project is the realization of a complete Virtual Reality (VR) System that integrates a visual real-time representation of virtual textiles with a haptic (force and tactile feedback) interface, thus allowing the user not only to have the sensation of feeling the virtual garment, but also to identify different kinds of fabric in a virtual environment. Both the visual simulation and the haptic rendering will be based on the actual physical properties of the simulated textile, obtained by specific measurements on real textiles.

The achievement of the final goal of creating full haptic interaction with real-time animated textiles will facilitate the future realization of such multimodal frameworks featuring haptic interaction with any kind of virtual deformable objects.