Passive haptics based MR system for geography teaching

Passive haptics in an alternative way to provide the user with realistic haptic feedback with a low cost comparing to device-based active haptics. This paper presents a mixed reality system with passive haptics integration that supports bare-hand interaction for users to see and touch virtual objects in immersive virtual environment (IVE). With the educational potential, the purposed system is applied to geography teaching. The prototype combines feature-based visual tracking for user's head and objects in the real environment with free-hand motion detection via a depth camera, thus user can see both their hands and objects in the virtual environment. A study of virtual teaching of geography of Germany was conducted, 18 subjects participated in the formal experiments which include three different learning environments. The results showed that the participants learning in the virtual environment with passive haptics consume more time than the virtual environment with free-hand gesture in finishing geography teaching tasks which is contrary to the expected result. The reasons are discussed in detail. Furthermore, quality of memorizing geographical knowledge in the group with passive haptic feedback exceeds that in the group without.