Enhancing audiovisual experience with haptic feedback: A survey on HAV(E)

Haptics have been employed in a wide set of applications ranging from teleoperation and medical simulation to arts and design, including entertainment, aircraft simulation and virtual reality. As for today, there is also a growing attention from the research community on how haptic feedback can be integrated with profit to audiovisual systems. The objective of this paper is to present the techniques, formalisms and key results on the enhancement of audiovisual experience with haptic feedback. We first review the three main stages in the pipeline which are (i) production of haptic effects, (ii) distribution of haptic effects and (iii) rendering of haptic effects. We then highlight the strong necessity for evaluation techniques in this context and discuss the key challenges in the field. By building on technology and results from virtual reality, and tackling the specific challenges in the enhancement of audiovisual experience with haptics, we believe the field presents exciting research perspectives for which financial and societal stakes are significant.