During the year 2022 of my master I realized with a team an end of year project. This end of year project was oriented towards a research and development on a problematic for a startup. This problematic deals with eating in virtual reality. The goal of our project was to create an application that would allow a user in VR to eat a real food being visible in his virtual environment. To answer this need we created a 3D printed connected plate. We had six weeks to realize this project. We were composed of two 3D graphic designers including a person specialized in CAD and me as a programmer and electronics technician. This application was realized on Unity.
Interaction aspect :Application : The application puts in situation a user in VR who will be the Customer in a restaurant. He will have to interact with another non-VR user who will play the role of waiter to order his plate. Once this is done, the VR Customer user will be able to eat the food with the connected plate.
VR User (Customer) : The VR user who is the customer will be able to see his hands with the help of hand tracking (Vive Pro Camera), he can also see and interact with the Non VR waiter user. During the application he will be able to perceive the connected plate and also interact with it from his environment.
Non VR User (Waiter) : The Non VR User who is the waiter of the restaurant does not have a VR headset but is tracked in space (Vive Tracker) and represented by a VR avatar. He can interact with the VR Customer and bring him his connected plate.
Connected Plate : The connected plate is tracked in space (Vive Tracker), it is present in reality as well as in the virtual environment. It contains food and knows if it is still present or not on the plate. It allows the VR Customer to see the food and eat it from the virtual environment.
Connected plate electronic engineering :The connected plate is composed of a set conceptualized in CAD and then printed in 3D. It is followed in space thanks to an HTC Vive Tracker. To detect the presence or not of food on the plate an electronic part has been set up. An arduino Nano (Uno on the diagram) is powered by a 9V battery with an ON/OFF switch. Thanks to a photoresistance the arduino can determine the presence or not of a food according to the luminosity perceived on the part of the feeder. It then activates a transistor that stimulates the Trigger input of the Vive Tracker through the Pogos Pins. This allows our application to retrieve the information and display or not the food.
Electronic engineering
Connected plate CAD
Connected plate final result