Multi-point Pressure Sensation Display Using Pneumatic Actuators

Abstract

In this research, we developed the device that makes it possible to present a haptic sense in a wide range of a hand with high-density. This device is composed of a plurality of modules with built-in pin arrays and pneumatically drives the pins in the module compress the skin and present the haptic sense. There is 2 type of devices, one’s density of pins evenly distributed on the whole hand (device1), and the other’s density of pins are arranged with high-density of fingertips based on a 2-point threshold (device2). The total number of pins was 128 for both devices. The Controller of the device was composed of electro-pneumatic regulators, a control circuit, and a PC. Force presented by each actuator was computed based on the simulation of contact between the virtual hand and object. In order to evaluate the performance of these devices, 3-dimensional shape recognition experiment of virtual objects was conducted. Measurement results of correct answer rate and response time were 65.6% and 46.1 s in device1. The results of device2 were 70.3% and 40.2 s. From these results, it was suggested that the arrangement of the presentation stimuli based on the 2-point discrimination threshold is effective for the tactile recognition.