Design and development of miniature wearable haptic interfaces for the fingertips

F. Gosselin (1) , Amélie Chabrier (1) , V. Weistroffer (1) , A. Girard (1)

1 DIASI - Département Intelligence Ambiante et Systèmes Interactifs

The recent availability of high performance and cost effective head mounted displays generates a considerable interest for Virtual Reality, both for professional applications and for the mass market. Users can now be efficiently immersed in virtual worlds, with a high quality 3D visual and auditory feedback. They can also interact with the environment using RGBD cameras or 6 Degrees of Freedom (DoFs) wands. To date however, the commercially available systems do not provide more than vibratory feedback and the users cannot really feel the simulated environments. Therefore a more complete haptic feedback is required. Within this context, wearable haptics appear as a promising solution. This paper introduces such a 2 DoF miniature haptic interface for the fingertips. This device allows applying shear forces in 2D, with an amplitude of movement of ±2mm and a force above 2.7N in any direction. It weights only 22g and its dimensions favorably compares to the state of the art.

Keywords: Cost effectiveness; Degrees of freedom (mechanics); Helmet mounted displays; Mice (computer peripherals); Virtual reality; Wearable technology; Auditory feedback; Degrees of freedom (DoFs); Design and Development; Haptic feedbacks; Head mounted displays; Simulated environment; State of the art; Virtual worlds; Haptic interfaces

Domains: Engineering Sciences [physics]

F. Gosselin, Amélie Chabrier, V. Weistroffer, A. Girard. Design and development of miniature wearable haptic interfaces for the fingertips. 2017 IEEE World Haptics Conference (WHC), Jun 2017, Munich, Germany. pp.611-616, ⟨10.1109/WHC.2017.7989971⟩. ⟨cea-01841671⟩