Experiments for Developping Touchable Online Shopping System
Kenji Funahashi∗
Nagoya Instituteof Technology

Masahisa Ichino
Central Japan International
Airport Co.,Ltd.

Abstract
The touchable online shopping system we propose enables users
can touch a virtual commodity with their own hands. One purpose of our proposal is to evaluate whether it is easy to measure thesize and weight of the commodity intuitively only with small-scale
size and low-price elements. Another is to make a general-purpose
system only with them for general applications. With such virtualreality, we used a data-glove with vibrators and a simple force feedback device to cover any impressions such as interface interference
during use. We evaluated whether users can measure the size andweight of a virtual commodity. Using this system, we found thatusers could measure them similar to the use of real ones.
CR Categories:
H.5.1 [Information Interfaces and Presentation]: Multimedia Information Systems—Artificial, Augmented,and Virtual Realities; H.5.2 [Information Interfaces and Presentation]: User Interfaces—Haptic I/O
Keywords: virtual reality, online shopping, haptic and force feedback

1 Introduction

Mototoshi Teshigahara
Nagoya Regional
Taxation Bureau

compared with virtual one, and size of virtual hand should be calibrated. It also remains that real object weight should be comparedwith virtual one.
We begin with an overview of touchable online shopping system
and informative control, proceed with experiments and results, andclose with conclusions. This technique might be not only for touchable online shopping system but also for any virtual reality system
to use at personal home.

2 Touchable Online Shopping
In our system, we considered the virtual hand in PC monitor whichmoves, opens and closes following the movement of the real handwhich wears a data-glove and force feedback device. The illustration of our future system is shown in Figure 1. Although thedata-glove with vibrators and force feedback device we used wereexpensive exactly, the Essentialreality P5 GLOVE which was able
to connect to PC via USB was marketed for around $100 recently,
and The Novint Falcon which is force feedback device is marketed
for around $200 (Figure 2). It is expected that vibration and force
feedback system are able to be attached on a data-glove such as theP5 GLOVE, and the glove with vibrators and force feedback element is able to be marketed in low-price if there are many demands.

Many experiments in virtual reality (VR) research and object manipulation involve glove-like input devices. The latest developments include gloves with vibrators in the fingertips for conveying
information or that provide feedback forces to individual fingers.
Introducing haptic and force feedback usually involves larger, more
expensive equipment, although fields such as medicine prioritize
precision over cost [Okamura et al. 2003] [Okamura et al. 2001].
On the one hand, utilization of online shopping is increasing recently as the evolution of the mail order. In the former mail order,
only the images of a commodity and their explanations are shown.
In the next mail order system through TV, the motion and soundof a commodity are shown too. And now we can look it from any
direction on the Internet with interactive 3D technique. However
we usually touch and take the commodity in our hand at a store forchecking the size and feeling of it.

Figure 1: Illustration of our future system.

In this research, we considered the Touchable Online Shopping system with thin haptic and force feedback [Funahashi et al. 2008].
The system consists of only small-scale size and low-price elements, because our goal is widely generalization. We already evaluated that virtual object thickness was compared with another virtual
one with vibration feedback. Then at the experiment of 2cm difference, positive answer ratio was 100% and the ratio of 0.5cm was75%. It remains as our task that real object thickness should be∗ e-mail: kenji@nitech.ac.jp

Figure 2: P5 GLOVE and Falcon.
For simplification, only rectangular parallelepiped is considered ascommodity in the experimental system, for example, digital camera and mobile phone. When a subject touches a virtual object, thesystem convey information through vibration. However actual feeling of grasp dose not convey to a subject, subject feels touch sensethrough vibration and feels the size from vibration as reaction force.
When a subject put a virtual object on a hand, the system convey
information through force feedback. However the force feedback
device we used was simple one, it could not feedback force at multi
point like every fingertips but at only one point.
Pilot study suggested that vibration at the ring finger and little finger gave poor results, as did strong vibration, so we focused on thethumb, forefinger, middle finger, and palm as vibration points, andset “Felt” strength (“Not felt excessively” strength for palm) when
they contact to an object. And the feedback point of a force feedback device was decided on palm.

jects was ten and they did not have any experience of this systembefore experiments. One 130g real object and seven virtual objects
were prepared (cf. Table 2). Every subject tried nine times for eachweight pattern. The subjects checked real object weight without
VR system, then selected a same weight virtual object from threevirtual one with PHANTOM Omni system (Figure 4). The resultis shown in Table 2 and the number of times of 130g is correct one.
Although we could find good result, 10g difference was difficult
task and there was a tendency to feel virtual weight heavier thenreal one. We think that we could revise virtual weight.

3 Experiment and Result
The Touchable Online Shopping system mentioned above was implemented on a PC with C language with Immersion CyberTouch,
Polhemus 3SPACE FASTRAK and PHANTOM Omni. The systemappearance images of this system are shown in Figure 3 and Figure 4. It refreshed the CG image at 20 frames/sec. The virtual hand
shown in CG was assumed as that of subjects.

R→VV→R
sum

Table 1: Experiment for size.
correct ±5mm ±10mm
20151
1516535
316more000

Table 2: Experiment for weight.
pattern 1
pattern 2
pattern 3
weight times
weight timesweight times
80g
20100g33120g
43130g
67130g53130g29180g
3160g
4140g
184 Conclusion
In experiments to evaluate online shopping system, vibration feedback is effective as force feedback, and the vibrational stimulus
where man can realistically never touch, i.e., palm is also effective.
Figure 3: Experiment system with CyberTouch.

Figure 4: Experiment system with PHANTOM Omni.
It was evaluated whether subjects could compare virtual object sizewith real one. The number of right-handed subjects was nine andthey did not have any experience of this system before experiments.
The number of real object was eleven and the size was 100mm
height and 10mm thicknesses, and the width was 20–70mm at 5mmintervals. The number of virtual object was also eleven just like realone. Every subject tried two times tasks for two given real objects.
The task was to check a given real object first, then to try to select asame size virtual object from eleven virtual one (R→V). And they
tried second tasks in the same way as first task (V→R). The resultis shown in Table 1. There were many correct answers and no error more than 10mm. We found that subject could see the size ofvirtual object from vibration feedback.
The second experiment was to evaluate whether subjects could
compare virtual object weight with real one. The number of sub-

Their size and price preclude using many of the force and haptic
feedback devices developed thus far for home use, while the vibrator system is used for the silent mode of mobile phone and video
game controller. Although the data-glove we used is very expensive
one, there are/were some data-gloves for video game in the market.
It would be able to make a data-glove with vibrator at a low price inthe future. Using this data-glove and the method proposed, various
virtual reality system might be produced and sold, for example, for
our home through the internet.
Despite some favorable results, bugs remain. We could not test
sufficient statistical hypotheses for experiments because of too few
subjects, meaning for example, that we tested some vibration andstrength patterns, leaving them for future work. It remains as ourtask that virtual hand (thickness of finger and color of hand) should
be calibrated. Of course actual Touchable Online Shopping Systemshould be realized. We are looking for the data-glove production
company and Online shopping company.

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