Presentation Capability of Compound Displays for Pressure and Force

Abstract

The authors developed advanced haptic displays capable of stimulating the muscles and tendons of the forearms and tactile receptors in fingers to investigate tactile and force effects on simultaneous presentation. Display A is comprised of a master hand with two sets of tactile display with a 4-by-6 array of stimulus pins driven by micro-actuators and an articulated manipulator. Display B is comprised of an articulated manipulator and an 8-by-8 array type tactile display developed in a previous paper. A series of experiments was performed using the above A and B displays to verify the presentation capability of this display type. In Experiment I, subjects grasped virtual pegs and judged their diameters. In Experiment II, subjects tried to insert the pegs into holes. In Experiment III, the crossed-angle of a comparison texture was adjusted to bring it as close as possible to the standard texture fixed during experiments. Since diameter discrimination and insertion precision of the virtual peg were increased by tactile information, tactile-force presentation was effective for peg-in-hole for relatively large clearance. On the other hand, recognition capability for virtual texture was not enhanced compared to a mouse-mounted tactile display previously developed. While the pressure display is effective for instant of touch and peg rotation representations, rotation tactile imaging is not always effective for texture recognitions.