Imagine yourself听sipping coffee at a caf茅 wearing听augmented reality glasses and summoning a听virtual screen and keyboard that immediately appears in front of you. Wearing haptic feedback gloves, as you type, you feel each keystroke on your fingertips, and if you run your fingers along the edge of your keyboard, you feel its edges. You can also move the keyboard around on the table鈥攊t feels as if it's real, and the screen hovering at an ergonomically optimal height above the keyboard looks like a normal screen. However, to a passerby, the only thing in front of you is a cup of coffee. Your fingers are moving in thin air and you are looking intently at nothing.
Realizing technology that makes this possible is a goal of Reality Labs Research at Meta (previously Facebook), where ATLAS PhD student Purnendu听has been helping develop soft, wearable devices, such as wristbands, rings and gloves, that deliver just the right level of haptic feedback to a wearer in response to contact with an object in virtual or augmented reality.听Haptic feedback is created a variety of ways, including through tiny electric motors (actuators) and shape-changing materials.
"This is a great opportunity听not only to build upon my earlier work听at ATLAS, but also to be around peopletasked with听inventing the future of human interaction in augmented and virtual reality,鈥� says Purnendu, who will remain at听Meta in Redmond, Washington through August.
The听work aligns with Purnendu's听doctoral research on shaping materials using electrostatic fields and developing human-centered applications. During the internship, Purnendu听plans to explore building body-worn solutions鈥攍everaging insights from his听past research which emphasized the shape-changing behavior of soft electrohydraulic actuators.
Purnendu holds an integrated master鈥檚 degree in physics from Indian Institute of Technology听(IIT) Roorkee in India and has a background in material science and design. He is advised by Assistant Professor听Carson Bruns and Associate Professor Gregory Whiting.
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