Workspace Enlargement of Cable-Based Haptic Device Using Linear Actuator

Abstract

Haptic displays have been attracting attention for several decades and a broad range of devices have been developed to allow interaction with virtual objects. Among these, cablebased architectures were researched in order to overcome the lack of flexibility and the intrusiveness inherent to rigid haptic displays. Cable robots allow the utilization of several end effectors, which can be proved to be particularly useful for providing haptic rendering on several fingers for the bimanual manipulation of virtual objects. Nonetheless, interference can appear when cables touch each other during manipulation. Also, some configurations may require a high number of cables to make full use of the frame of the device. Here, we propose a novel architecture of a haptic display based on SPIDAR. Our purpose is to enlarge the usable workspace of an existing device configuration while lowering the number of cables and without hindering the quality of the display. A hybrid planar haptic device architecture with n+1 cables that includes a linear module is introduced. Design considerations and the kinematics used are detailed. Then, simple tasks are performed to verify the usability of the device as a haptic display.