Design and development of miniature wearable haptic interfaces for the fingertips

Abstract : 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.