Project R-15703

Immersive-Reality Prototyping: Foundations and Paradigms for Iterative Design and Immersive Testing of Human-Machine Interfaces (Research)

This research initiative is aimed at forging the foundations and methodologies for a fundamentally new prototyping paradigm, we coin as Immersive-Reality Prototyping. This allows for the iterative design and immersive testing of Human-Machine Interfaces (HMIs). Traditional physical prototyping techniques, while beneficial for tangible interaction, suffer from high costs, high time consumption, and a lack of flexibility. Virtual prototyping offers solutions to these challenges but fails to offer convenient approaches for early-stage design and accurate simulation of user interactions, particularly in terms of haptics. This multidisciplinary effort, working towards Immersive-Reality Prototyping, overcomes these limitations by allowing designers to iteratively design and test HMIs in a mixed-reality context that offers high-fidelity visual, tactile, and functional feedback. The research will focus on two primary challenges: (1) the creation of a novel 3D modeling paradigm for designing HMIs within mixed-reality environments, and (2) the development of adaptive haptic control mechanisms and encountered-type haptic systems to simulate interactive controls and tactile feedback. This project involves close collaboration among leading researchers from different institutes, leveraging their complementary expertise in human-computer interaction, CAD modeling, prototyping, and haptics engineering.

01 October 2025 - 30 September 2029