Wearable Haptic Feedback for Immersivity and User Awareness in VR-Based Surgical Training

The use of simulated environments in virtual reality (VR) for surgical training has widely shown its benefits in real world cases. The same holds for the adoption of wearable haptic interfaces for interacting with virtual objects and scenes. The interplay between the two research areas, instead, has been less studied. This paper investigates the role of multimodal haptic feedback in VR simulations for training surgeons. Two types of haptic feedback are introduced and, for the first time, jointly evaluated in a VR surgical training context: The first allows the user to perceive the contact with objects, their texture and their temperature improving the immersiveness of the virtual environment; The second communicates to the user the occurrence of events in the simulation that are relevant for the training (e.g., the completion of an operational step) improving the user awareness. A user study with a total of 18 participants (12 medical students, 5 residents in maxillofacial surgery, and 1 specialist in maxillofacial surgery) showed how these two kinds of haptic feedback affect users’ performance in the simulated operation, and users’ experience in terms of usability, perceived workload, and immersivity.