B:Ionic Glove: A Soft Smart Wearable Sensory Feedback Device for Upper Limb Robotic Prostheses

Upper limb robotic prosthetic devices currently lack adequate sensory feedback, contributing to a high rejection rate. Incorporating affective sensory feedback into these devices reduces phantom limb pain and increases control and acceptance. To address the lack of sensory feedback we present the B:Ionic glove, wearable over a robotic hand which contains sensing, computation and actuation on board. It uses shape memory alloy (SMA) actuators integrated into an armband to gently squeeze the user's arm when pressure is sensed in novel electro-fluidic fingertip sensors and decoded through soft matter logic. We found that a circular electro-fluidic sensor cavity generated the most sensitive fingertip sensor and considered a computational configuration to convey different information from robot to user. A user study was conducted to characterise the tactile interaction capabilities of the device. No significant difference was found between the skin sensitivity threshold of participants' lower and upper arm. They found it easier to distinguish stimulation locations than strengths. Finally, we demonstrate a proof-of-concept of the complete device, illustrating how it could be used to grip an object, solely from the affective tactile feedback provided by the B:Ionic glove. The B:Ionic glove is a step towards the integration of natural, soft sensory feedback into robotic prosthetic devices.</p

Two-Fingered Haptic Device for Robot Hand Teleoperation

A haptic feedback system is required to assist telerehabilitation with robot hand. The system should provide the reaction force measured in the robot hand to an operator. In this paper, we have developed a force feedback device that presents a reaction force to the distal segment of the operator's thumb, middle finger, and basipodite of the middle finger when the robot hand grasps an object. The device uses a shape memory alloy as an actuator, which affords a very compact, lightweight, and accurate device

Analysis of Product Architectures of Pin Array Technologies for Tactile Displays

Refreshable tactile displays based on pin array technologies have a significant impact on the education of children with visual impairments, but they are prohibitively expensive. To better understand their design and the reason for the high cost, we created a database and analyzed the product architectures of 67 unique pin array technologies from literature and patents. We qualitatively coded their functional elements and analyzed the physical parts that execute the functions. Our findings highlight that pin array surfaces aim to achieve three key functions, i.e., raise and lower pins, lock pins, and create a large array. We also contribute a concise morphological chart that organises the various mechanisms for these three functions. Based on this, we discuss the reasons for the high cost and complexity of these surface haptic technologies and infer why larger displays and more affordable devices are not available. Our findings can be used to design new mechanisms for more affordable and scalable pin array display systems

Wearable haptic systems for the fingertip and the hand: taxonomy, review and perspectives

In the last decade, we have witnessed a drastic change in the form factor of audio and vision technologies, from heavy and grounded machines to lightweight devices that naturally fit our bodies. However, only recently, haptic systems have started to be designed with wearability in mind. The wearability of haptic systems enables novel forms of communication, cooperation, and integration between humans and machines. Wearable haptic interfaces are capable of communicating with the human wearers during their interaction with the environment they share, in a natural and yet private way. This paper presents a taxonomy and review of wearable haptic systems for the fingertip and the hand, focusing on those systems directly addressing wearability challenges. The paper also discusses the main technological and design challenges for the development of wearable haptic interfaces, and it reports on the future perspectives of the field. Finally, the paper includes two tables summarizing the characteristics and features of the most representative wearable haptic systems for the fingertip and the hand

DragTapVib: An On-Skin Electromagnetic Drag, Tap, and Vibration Actuator for Wearable Computing

The skin, as the largest organ distributed all over the human body, offers excellent opportunities for different kinds of input stimuli. However, most of the haptic devices can only render single sensations or they need to combine multiple complex components for generating multiple sensations. We present “DragTapVib” in this paper, a novel, ultra-low-cost, wearable actuator that can reliably provide dragging, tapping, and vibrating sensations to the user. Our actuator is fully electromagnetically-actuated with a moving tactor that can render three haptic feedbacks through systematically controlling the current inside the flexible PCBs. The actuator can be arranged with varying parts of the body which enriches the potentials to implement promising application scenarios including delivering the notification and providing immersive haptic feedback either in virtual reality or in gameplay. A prototypical technical evaluation demonstrated the mechanical properties of our actuator. We quantitatively conducted a series of psychophysical user studies (N= 12) to reveal the feasibility of our prototype. The overall absolute identification study for distinguishing three sensations accuracy at two body locations reached up to 97.2%

Master of Science

thesisHaptic interactions with smartphones are generally restricted to vibrotactile feedback that offers limited distinction between delivered tactile cues. The lateral movement of a small, high-friction contactor at the fingerpad can be used to induce skin stretch tangent to the skin's surface. This method has been demonstrated to reliably communicate four cardinal directions with 1 mm translations of the device's contactor, when finger motion is properly restrained. While earlier research has used a thimble to restrain the finger, this interface has been made portable by incorporating a simple conical hole as a finger restraint. An initial portable device design used RC hobby servos and the conical hole finger restraint, but the shape and size of this portable device wasn't compatible with smartphone form factors. This design also had significant compliance and backlash that must be compensated for with additional control schemes. In contrast, this thesis presents the design, fabrication, and testing of a low-profile skin-stretch display (LPSSD) with a novel actuation design for delivering complex tactile cues with minimal backlash or hysteresis of the skin contactor or "tactor." This flatter mechanism features embedded sensors for fingertip cursor control and selection. This device's nonlinear tactor motions are compensated for using table look-up and high-frequency open-loop control to create direction cues with 1.8 mm radial tactor displacements in 16 directions (distributed evenly every 22.5°) before returning to center. Two LPSSDs are incorporated into a smartphone peripheral and used in single-handed and bimanual tests to identify 16 directions. Users also participated in "relative" identification tests where they were first provided a reference direction cue in the forward/north direction followed by the cue direction that they were to identify. Tests were performed with the user's thumbs oriented in the forward direction and with thumbs angled inward slightly, similar to the angledthumb orientation console game controllers. Users are found to have increased performance with an angled-thumb orientation. They performed similarly when stimuli were delivered to their right or left thumbs, and had significantly better performance judging direction cues with both thumbs simultaneously. Participants also performed slightly better in identifying the relative direction cues than the absolute