Unity game engine: interactive software design using digital glove for virtual reality baseball pitch training

Abstract

This paper proposes a novel baseball pitch training software design to interact with a virtual object in a virtual reality or augmented reality environment by combining a Unity game engine and a digital glove. An embedded microcontroller unit with a communication interface in the digital glove collects sensory data, including mechanical physical limit feedback, electric shock tactile feedback, finger-bending sensations, and three-dimensional spatial positioning, then interacts with the Unity game engine and HTC Vive through a personal computer. The user thereby experiences the sensation of holding an object in virtual reality. Autodesk Maya software is used to design a baseball pitch training mainframe with modeling and animation. The Unity game engine can load baseball pitching scenarios and create a three-dimensional virtual reality stream that is sent to an HTC Vive headset. To seamlessly complete the data exchange between the digital glove and the Unity engine, we use a shared memory mechanism designed with the C# Windows program. The embedded C# script design within the Unity game engine plays an important interactive role between virtual reality scenes and the digital glove. Our experimental results showed that players received physical feedback when touching virtual objects. The proposed design has potential for application in medical rehabilitation and physical training.