AirPinch - An Inflatable Touch Fader with Pneumatic Tactile Feedback

Abstract

This paper gives an overview of our work-in-progress prototype of a textile-pneumatic force-feedback system that augments the user-interaction on touch-sensor strips with interactive tactile cues. Air-pressure inside a shape-changing textile actuator is dynamically modulated, to create a perceivable pinch-like impression at the user's fingertip. This dynamic pneumotactile pinch can be leveraged as a tangible output modality for interaction design. The soft actuators are driven by a pneumatic control system that adjusts the pneumatic pressure in response to the finger position. We have explored different textile air-chamber layouts to achieve tactile feedback and provide a preliminary discussion of their tactile capabilities and design patterns. We further give a brief overview of three different pneumatic control system architectures and their underlying tactile pressure profiles used to operate the actuators to create different types of tactile sensations. A preliminary discussion of the capabilities, challenges, and limitations of our system is also provided.