Lucas VRTech designs and 3D prints finger tracking gloves for virtual reality

China3D printingNet April 14th, a student named Lucas VRTech designed and3D printingA pair of low-cost finger tracking gloves for virtual reality.
This open source glove called LucidVR is currently undergoing its third iteration, allowing users to accurately track their fingers without using a dedicated VR controller.LucasTactile feedback is currently being added to gloves, which means they will enable users to feel virtual objects as if they are actually in the hand.

Summarizing the cost of all components and filaments, the LucidVR project only cost $22 ($11 per hand). These devices have been tested in many VR games such as Half Life Alyx and Pavlov VR, and they are functioning normally.
Lucas explained when talking about the forthcoming fourth iteration: “The VR haptic gloves I am developing will have both finger tracking and tactile functions so that you can pick up an object and feel it with your hand. “


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Lucas and his3D printingVR gloves. Photography: Lucas VRTech.

VR tactile gloves: a toy for the rich

The ability to pick up a virtual object and actually feel it in the palm of your hand is the next step towards full immersion in VR. Companies such as VRgluv and HaptX are already developing such devices, but the high cost prevents ordinary consumers from using these products. Therefore, they are usually only used by companies for VR-based training purposes, not for games and other entertainment activities.

Lucas added: “I am very fascinated by VR myself. I really want to have this experience, so I decided to try to make some VR gloves myself. Initially, this was an interesting project of my own, but now, it My mission is to help ordinary consumers afford VR haptic gloves.”




Most of the structural parts of the glove are3D printingof. Photography: Lucas VRTech.

How do they work?

There are several ways to track finger movement, but the simplest and most cost-effective method is to use strings.by using3D printingThe ring and finger cap connect the string to the fingertip. You can measure the distance the string is pulled out, which can be converted into fist and finger extension. When it comes to tactile feedback, you can also use a string to pull your finger back to simulate the force of an object in your hand.
To measure these string tensions, Lucas used a potentiometer-the same one that can be found under the volume knob of an electric guitar. Potentiometers change their resistance based on how far the knob is turned, so they can be used to map these resistances to the pulling string caused by finger movement.

The next step is to provide a reaction force for the fingers to ensure that the string is always under constant tension and retracts when the fist is not clenched. To this end, Lucas simply used a set of retractable ID badge scrolls, which he found on the Internet to be 30 cents each.
To tie them together, the gloves are powered by a small Arduino microcontroller running a Python program. The program was developed by Lucas himself, which takes data from the potentiometer and converts it into a pair of virtual pointers in VR. To track the position of the hand itself (including the rotation of the hand), users can use the camera of Oculus Quest 2, or use other accessories such as VIVE Tracker.
With the help of Danwillm, Lucas has open sourced all the work of the project.All necessarystl fileAnd the driver code can be found on the LucidVR project page. Address: https://hackaday.io/project/178243-lucidvr-budget-haptic-glove

LucidVR is used to track finger movement in Half Life Alyx. Photography: Lucas VRTech.

Projects like LucidVR can keep the open source community alive and participate3D printing.Last year, open source3D printingDesigner Johan Von Konow launched his own DIY project, a modular 3D printable MIDI synthesizer. The so-called LEET synthesizer is an interesting project with a total cost of only $6.

Elsewhere, a group of software engineers has previously released open source AI software that can automatically suspend failed FDM printing. Spaghetti Detective uses the webcam of a printer or home computer to detect when a print job goes wrong and starts to squeeze out “spaghetti”, thereby interrupting the process and alerting the user via email or text message.

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