Neck Goes VRrr

Reducing Rotation-Induced Virtual Reality Sickness through Neck Muscle Vibrations

KAIST
IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics

Abstract

With the widespread use of virtual reality (VR), VR sickness is becoming a key barrier for users to have prolonged VR experience. To alleviate VR sickness, researchers focused on reducing sensory mismatch by aligning the visual information with other sensory cues during the VR experience. We present a wearable haptic interface enabling neck muscle vibration (NMV) with a multi-stimulus configuration. NMV's vibration on muscle spindles causes a haptic proprioceptive illusion of muscle stretch. Through NMV, we provide a simulated sensation of neck rotation to users without physically rotating the neck. For a left and right rotation on the yaw axis, we vibrated the sternocleidomastoid (SCM) muscles and splenius capitis (SC) muscles. Our lightweight interface vibrates different combinations of actuators on the left and right SCM and SC muscles to deliver multi-stimulus NMV in a desired illusory direction. We found that NMV sensation differs among individuals and is less effective during neck rotation. Based on these results, we developed a calibration and rendering process for NMV using real-time VR rotation information with varying viewpoint control. Our evaluation, which used a VR scene mimicking a common VR experience, showed that NMV effectively reduces rotation-induced VR sickness and improves the overall VR experience, such as presence.

Inducing Proprioceptive Illusion Through Neck Muscle Vibration

We delivered vibrotactile stimulation on the left and right SCM muscles and SC muscles. By vibrating the right SCM and the left SC muscles, the user perceives a left rotation on the yaw axis.

To control the 4 motors, we used a ESP32 microcontroller with a 8-channel multiplexer. Through this we could easily switch between different NMV configurations by varying vibration location and vibration duration.

Using the results of our exploratory study, we developed a haptic rendering system to obtain VR scene information in real-time and deliver the adequate NMV configuration.

Using NMV to Reduce VR Sickness

We conducted a system evaluation with 20 participants measuring VR sickness and presence. Participants experienced a VR scene using a combination of one VR navigation control method (Video, Controller, Neck) and one NMV setting (None, fixed duration, fully adaptive).

After experiencing a combination, participants answered the simulator sickness questionnaire. We observed a significant decrease in VR sickness when NMV was applied.

Participants also answered a Slater-Usoh-Steed questionnaire for presence. There was a significant increase in presence when NMV was applied.

BibTeX

@article{song2025neck, title={Neck Goes VRrr: Reducing Rotation-Induced Virtual Reality Sickness through Neck Muscle Vibrations}, author={Song, Kun-Woo and Yoon, Sang Ho}, journal={IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics}, year={2025}, publisher={IEEE} }