A Novel Three Degrees of Freedom Haptic Device for Rendering Texture, Stiffness, Shape, and Shear
28 Oct 2019-Vol. 78, pp 412-422
TL;DR: This paper presents the design and development of a novel three Degrees of Freedom (DoF) tactile haptic device to acquire haptic feedback from a known virtual/remote environment and preliminary experimental results confirm the fidelity of haptic Feedback to the user while interacting with the environment.
Abstract: Rendering haptic feedback, particularly tactile feedback of various objects or the environment, extends its usage in a wide variety of applications in order to provide a realistic experience for the user. Conventional methods for reproducing tactile sensations involve utilizing piezoelectric, electro-tactile, and other types of actuators, which do not lend themselves the flexibility to reproduce various surface textures in real time. In this paper, we present the design and development of a novel three Degrees of Freedom (DoF) tactile haptic device to acquire haptic feedback from a known virtual/remote environment. The haptic sensations are rendered to the user through a two-DoF spherical segment of the device consisting of an array of surfaces. The roll and pitch motion of the spherical segment provides tactile cues like texture and shear. Additional DoF provides the stiffness and shape variations based on the feedback it receives. A semi-compliant four-link mechanism, mounted on a gimbal setup, provides the necessary stiffness/shape variation effects. A prototype of the device has been fabricated and tested. The preliminary experimental results confirm the fidelity of haptic feedback to the user while interacting with the environment.
Citations
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TL;DR: In this paper, the feasibility of a tactile display based on the magnetorheological elastomers (MREs) was studied, and it was shown that the development of an MRE-based tactile display is feasible using the proposed enhanced MRE composites.
Abstract: In this study, the feasibility of a novel tactile display based on the magnetorheological elastomers (MREs) was studied. To this end, initially, a survey on various requirements of tactile displays for surgical applications was performed. The survey showed that MREs would make a good fit for tactile displays. To further study the MREs, the samples were characterized perpendicular to the magnetic field, similar to the actual use-cases. Also, to compensate for the loss of MR-effect, due to the non-parallel application of compression and magnetic field, MREs were composited in bi-layer configuration with a non-MRE elastomer. The results of mechanical characterization showed that bi-layer composition increased the MR-effect in MREs by 42%. This study showed that further enhancement of MR-effect in MREs is possible through bi-layer composition with a non-MRE elastomer. Also, it was shown that the development of an MRE-based tactile display is feasible using the proposed enhanced MRE composites.
35 citations
TL;DR: This study suggests that EEG may have the potential to qualify non-steady electrotactile sensation for engineering applications and explores an objective analysis method in comparison to psychophysical approach.
Abstract: This paper aims to investigate whether electroencephalography (EEG) technology is effective in qualifying the tactile sensation evoked by non-steady cutaneous electrical stimulation. EEG is a novel method for electrotactile analysis and has demonstrated the discrimination ability for electrotactile sensation under steady contact conditions in recent years. However, in non-steady contact conditions, it is necessary to test its effectiveness. This study aims to explore an objective analysis method in comparison to psychophysical approach and to provide a methodology for non-steady electrotactile research.,With EEG experimentation on 13 volunteers, the authors collected evoked potentials by the predesigned “1” and “0” stimulation events. In addition, with a series of data preprocessing including artifact elimination, band-pass filtering, baseline normalization, data superposition and fast Fourier transform transformation, the authors got the power spectrum of alpha, beta and gamma rhythms. Furthermore, statistics analysis and ANOVA test were adopted for exploring the discrepancy of the spectrum characterizations for different non-steady electrostimulation events.,The EEG power spectrum of the central cortical brain is valuable in discriminating the two types of stimulation events. The power of alpha rhythm especially in the central cortical brain evoked by event “1,” whose current level is equal to the threshold, was significantly lower than that evoked by event “0,” whose level is less than the threshold (p < 0.05). Then, the power of the beta rhythm presented counter-change (p < 0.05). This study suggests that EEG may have the potential to qualify non-steady electrotactile sensation for engineering applications.,Limiting factors of non-steady electrotactile stimulation were considered in this study. Different tapping frequency and contact time should be investigated in future studies.,This paper fulfills a challenge in qualifying the tactile sensations evoked by non-steady electrical stimulation with EEG characteristics.
4 citations
TL;DR: In this article, a haptic device with three degrees of freedom (DOF) is developed to render high-fidelity touch sensations like stiffness, texture, shape, and shear concurrently.
Abstract: Haptic devices providing various sensations have multiple applications spanning over many fields such as surgical training, robot-assisted minimal invasive surgery (MIS), military, space, and underwater exploration. Most of the existing haptic interfaces lack the capability to effectively replicate the remote environment due to the intricacies involved in providing all necessary sensations simultaneously. In this paper, a novel haptic device with three degrees of freedom (DOF) is developed to render high-fidelity touch sensations like stiffness, texture, shape, and shear concurrently. The proposed haptic device consists of a spherical segment affixed with an array of texture surfaces based on the virtual/remote environment. The device can move in 3-DOF, namely, the pitch, roll, and vertical motion. The haptic interface provides kinesthetic cues like stiffness, shape, and environmental shear and tactile cues like texture by combining the movements of the three actuators along with the segmented housing. A systematic kinematic analysis of the proposed design is presented. The performance is enhanced by implementing the hybrid control methodology that switches between impedance and position control, thus making the interaction realistic and immersive. Experiments have been performed on the developed haptic device, and the results demonstrate its accuracy in reproducing various modalities of haptic feedback of the virtual/remote environment.
References
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31 Mar 2001
TL;DR: "Active Click" is a new interface mechanism for addling tactile feedback to touch panels that is effective in improving the input speed of touch panel operation especially in noisy situations.
Abstract: "Active Click" is a new interface mechanism for addling tactile feedback to touch panels. A small actuator is attached to a body of PDA or the backside of a touch panel. The tactile feedback, created by driving the actuator with a short pulse, is perceived by the grasping hand or tapping finger-tip when the panel is tapped. Active Click is effective in improving the input speed of touch panel operation especially in noisy situations. Active click is also useful for large touch panel devices such as public information terminals or ATMs.
279 citations
16 Oct 2016
TL;DR: It is found that haptic feedback significantly increases the accuracy of VR interaction, most effectively by rendering high-fidelity shape output as in the case of mechanically-actuated hand-held controllers.
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228 citations
24 Apr 2000
TL;DR: This paper describes the fabrication and performance of a one-piece pneumatically-actuated tactile display molded from silicone rubber, which has no chamber leakage and no seal friction.
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214 citations
19 Apr 2018
TL;DR: Haptic Revolver is a handheld virtual reality controller that renders fingertip haptics when interacting with virtual surfaces through an actuated wheel that raises and lowers underneath the finger to render contact with a virtual surface.
Abstract: We present Haptic Revolver, a handheld virtual reality controller that renders fingertip haptics when interacting with virtual surfaces. Haptic Revolver's core haptic element is an actuated wheel that raises and lowers underneath the finger to render contact with a virtual surface. As the user's finger moves along the surface of an object, the controller spins the wheel to render shear forces and motion under the fingertip. The wheel is interchangeable and can contain physical textures, shapes, edges, or active elements to provide different sensations to the user. Because the controller is spatially tracked, these physical features can be spatially registered with the geometry of the virtual environment and rendered on-demand. We evaluated Haptic Revolver in two studies to understand how wheel speed and direction impact perceived realism. We also report qualitative feedback from users who explored three application scenarios with our controller.
180 citations
TL;DR: The order in which 4 property classes of haptically perceived surfaces becomes available for processing after initial contact was studied, which included material, abrupt-surface discontinuity, relative orientation, and continuous 3-D surface contour properties.
Abstract: How the relative order in which 4 property classes of haptically perceived surfaces becomes available for processing after initial contact was studied. The classes included material, abrupt-surface discontinuity, relative orientation, and continuous 3-D surface contour properties. Relative accessibility was evaluated by using the slopes of haptic search functions obtained with a modified version of A. Treisman's (A. Treisman & S. Gormican, 1988) visual pop-out paradigm; the y0 intercepts were used to confirm and fine-tune order of accessibility. Target and distractors differed markedly in terms of their value on a single dimension. The results of 15 experiments show that coarse intensive discriminations are haptically processed early on. In marked contrast, most spatially encoded dimensions become accessible relatively later, sometimes considerably so.
175 citations