The Virtual Reality Hand Redirection Toolkit (HaRT) is an open-source toolkit developed for the Unity engine. The toolkit aims to support VR researchers and developers in implementing and evaluating hand redirection techniques. It provides implementations of popular redirection algorithms and exposes a modular class hierarchy for easy integration of new approaches. Moreover, simulation, logging, and visualization features allow users of the toolkit to analyze hand redirection setups with minimal technical effort.

To learn about this toolkit, please watch our video on YouTube:

For further details, please have a look at the paper about the HaRT published at ACM CHI 2021.

To get started with the toolkit visit the Wiki. The wiki contains short instructions as well as step-by-step tutorials and further details about the toolkit.

• HaRT_core -> standalone Unity Version (for VR and Non-VR usage); requires SteamVR

optional add-on #1:

• HaRT_Leap -> if you want to use Leap Motion; requires the HaRT_core package (see above), SteamVR (see above), and Leap Motion SDK

optional add-on #2:

• HaRT_BSHR -> if you want to use eye tracking with the Vive Pro Eye and make use of the Blink-Suppressed Hand Redirection Technique; requires the HaRT_core package (see above), SteamVR (see above), and SRAnipal SDK

optional add-on #3:

• HaRT_SBHR -> if you want to use eye tracking with the Vive Pro Eye and make use of the Saccadic & Blink-Suppressed Hand Redirection Technique; requires the HaRT_core package (see above), SteamVR (see above), and SRAnipal SDK

For more details, visit our Get Started Guide in the Wiki

We have created and tested the toolkit only on Windows 10 and Unity 2019.4, but as long as the Unity version supports the corresponding VR headset / the Leap Motion, it should work. We tested the toolkit with the Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive but it should work with every VR headset that is either compatible with the SteamVR Unity Plugin or with the LeapMotion SDK. We used the Unity SteamVR plugin version 2.7.2 and the Leap Motion Orion SDK version 4.6.0.
There is no VR system necessary to run the toolkit. It also works with mouse and keyboard.

If you are interested in contributing, check out this page in the wiki.

If you use the toolkit for one of your cool projects, please reference the toolkit given the information below and feel free to drop us a message:

André Zenner, Hannah Maria Kriegler, and Antonio Krüger. 2021. HaRT - The Virtual Reality Hand Redirection Toolkit. In CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems Extended Abstracts (CHI ’21 Extended Abstracts), May 8–13, 2021, Yokohama, Japan. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 7 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3411763.3451814

@inproceedings{Zenner:2021:VRHandRedirectionToolkit,
  author = {Zenner, Andr\'{e} and Kriegler, Hannah Maria and Kr\"{u}ger, Antonio},
  title = {HaRT - The Virtual Reality Hand Redirection Toolkit},
  year = {2021},
  isbn = {9781450380959},
  publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
  address = {New York, NY, USA},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3411763.3451814},
  doi = {10.1145/3411763.3451814},
  abstract = { Past research has proposed various hand redirection techniques for virtual reality (VR). Such techniques modify a user’s hand movements and have been successfully used to enhance haptics and 3D user interfaces. Up to now, however, no unified framework exists that implements previously proposed techniques such as body warping, world warping, and hybrid methods. In this work, we present the Virtual Reality Hand Redirection Toolkit (HaRT), an open-source framework developed for the Unity engine. The toolkit aims to support both novice and expert VR researchers and practitioners in implementing and evaluating hand redirection techniques. It provides implementations of popular redirection algorithms and exposes a modular class hierarchy for easy integration of new approaches. Moreover, simulation, logging, and visualization features allow users of the toolkit to analyze hand redirection setups with minimal technical effort. We present the architecture of the toolkit along with the results of a qualitative expert study.},
  booktitle = {Extended Abstracts of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems},
  articleno = {387},
  numpages = {7},
  keywords = {reach redirection, toolkit, redirected touching, haptic retargeting, hand redirection},
  location = {Yokohama, Japan},
  series = {CHI EA '21}
}

This toolkit was created by Hannah Kriegler as part of a Bachelor Thesis at the Ubiquitous Media Technology Lab (Saarland University), advised by André Zenner. If you have any questions, feel free to contact Hannah or André.