A Survey on Bimanual Haptic Interaction

When interacting with virtual objects through haptic devices, most of the time only one hand is involved. However, the increase of computational power, along with the decrease of device costs, allow more and more the use of dual haptic devices. The field which encompasses all studies of the haptic interaction with either remote or virtual environments using both hands of the same person is referred to as bimanual haptics. It differs from the common unimanual haptic field notably due to specificities of the human bimanual haptic system, e.g., the dominance of the hands, their differences in perception and their interactions at a cognitive level. These specificities call for adapted solutions in terms of hardware and software when applying the use of two hands to computer haptics. This paper reviews the state of the art on bimanual haptics, encompassing the human factors in bimanual haptic interaction, the currently available bimanual haptic devices, the software solutions for two-handed haptic interaction, and the existing interaction techniques.