A Systematic Review of Weight Perception in Virtual Reality: Techniques, Challenges, and Road Ahead

Abstract

Weight is perceived through the combination of multiple sensory systems, and many factors can influence the perception of heaviness, including touch, visual, and force senses. There have been significant advancements in the development of haptic interfaces throughout the years. However, many challenges limit the progression to enable humans to sense the weight in virtual reality (VR). This article presents an overview of the factors that influence how weight is perceived and the phenomenon that contributes to various types of weight illusions. A systematic review has been undertaken to study the development of weight perception in VR, underlying haptic technology that renders the mass of a virtual object, and the creation of weight perception through pseudo-haptic. We summarize the approaches from the perspective of haptic and pseudo-haptic cues that exhibit the sense of weight such as force, skin deformation, vibration, inertia, control-display (C/D) ratio, velocity, body gestures, and audio-visual representation. The design challenges are highlighted, and research gaps are discussed, including accuracy and precision, light weight discrimination, heavy weight rendering, and absolute weight simulation.