Displaying Sensed Tactile Cues with a Fingertip Haptic Device

2010

A prototype of a joystick where the kinesthetic feedback is substituted by tactile feedback is proposed. Tactile feedback is provided by a wearable device able to apply vertical stress to the fingertip in contact with the joystick. To test the device, rigid wall rendering is considered. Preliminary experiments show that the sensation of touching a virtual wall using the force feedback provided by the electric motor of the joystick is nearly indistinguishable from the sensation felt by the user using the tactile display only. The proposed device does not suffer from typical stability issues of teleoperation systems and is intrinsically safe.

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2014

In this work we present a novel haptic device that applies cutaneous force feedback to the forearm. We called it HapBand. It is composed of three moving plates, whose action on the forearm resembles the squeeze of a human hand. In order to validate the device, we carried out an experiment of remote tactile interaction. A glove, instrumented with five force sensors, registered the contact forces at the remote site, while the HapBand mimicked the registered sensation to the user's forearm. Results showed the HapBand to well resemble the squeezing sensation on the forearm.

Human-Robot Interaction, 2010

2022 IEEE 18th International Conference on Automation Science and Engineering (CASE)

Teleoperation of robotic systems for precise and delicate object grasping requires high-fidelity haptic feedback to obtain comprehensive real-time information about the grasp. In such cases, the most common approach is to use kinesthetic feedback. However, a single contact point information is insufficient to detect the dynamically changing shape of soft objects. This paper proposes a novel telemanipulation system that provides kinesthetic and cutaneous stimuli to the user's hand to achieve accurate liquid dispensing by dexterously manipulating the deformable object (i.e., pipette). The experimental results revealed that the proposed approach to provide the user with multimodal haptic feedback considerably improves the quality of dosing with a remote pipette. Compared with pure visual feedback, the relative dosing error decreased by 66% and task execution time decreased by 18% when users manipulated the deformable pipette with a multimodal haptic interface in combination with visual feedback. The proposed technology can be potentially implemented in delicate dosing procedures during the antibody tests for COVID-19, chemical experiments, operation with organic materials, and telesurgery.

A study on the role of cutaneous and kinesthetic force feedback in teleoperation is presented. Cutaneous cues provide less transparency than kinesthetic force, but they do not affect the stability of the teleoperation system. On the other hand, kinesthesia provides a compelling illusion of telepresence but affects the stability of the haptic loop. However, when employing common grounded haptic interfaces, it is not possible to independently control the cutaneous and kinesthetic components of the interaction. For this reason, many control techniques ensure a stable interaction by scaling down both kinesthetic and cutaneous force feedback, even though acting on the cutaneous channel is not necessary. We discuss here the feasibility of a novel approach. It aims at improving the realism of the haptic rendering, while preserving its stability, by modulating cutaneous force to compensate for a lack of kinesthesia. We carried out two teleoperation experiments, evaluating (1) the role of cutaneous stimuli when reducing kinesthesia and (2) the extent to which an overactuation of the cutaneous channel can fully compensate for a lack of kinesthetic force feedback. Results showed that, to some extent, it is possible to compensate for a lack of kinesthesia with the aforementioned technique, without significant performance degradation. Moreover, users showed a high comfort level in using the proposed system.

The advancements in the study of the human sense of touch are fueling the field of haptics. This is paving the way for augmenting the sensory perception during objects palpation in tele-surgery, and reproducing the information through tactile feedback. Here, we present a novel tele-palpation apparatus that enables the user to detect nodules with various distinct stiffness buried in an ad-hoc polymeric phantom. The contact force measured by the platform was encoded using a neuromorphic model and reproduced on the index fingertip of a remote user through a haptic glove embedding a piezoelectric disk. We assessed the effectiveness of this feedback in allowing nodule identification under two experimental conditions of real-time telepresence: In Line of Sight (ILS), where the platform was placed in the visible range of a user; and the more demanding Not In Line of Sight (NILS), with the platform being 50 km apart. We found that the entailed percentage of identification was higher for sti...

arXiv (Cornell University), 2023

Skill transfer from humans to robots is challenging. Presently, many researchers focus on capturing only position or joint angle data from humans to teach the robots. Even though this approach has yielded impressive results for grasping applications, reconstructing motion for object handling or fine manipulation from a human hand to a robot hand has been sparsely explored. Humans use tactile feedback to adjust their motion to various objects, but capturing and reproducing the applied forces is an open research question. In this paper we introduce a wearable fingertip tactile sensor, which captures the distributed 3-axis force vectors on the fingertip. The fingertip tactile sensor is interchangeable between the human hand and the robot hand, meaning that it can also be assembled to fit on a robot hand such as the Allegro hand. This paper presents the structural aspects of the sensor as well as the methodology and approach used to design, manufacture, and calibrate the sensor. The sensor is able to measure forces accurately with a mean absolute error of 0.21, 0.16, and 0.44 Newtons in X, Y, and Z directions, respectively.

Cutaneous haptic feedback can be used to enhance the performance of robotic teleoperation systems while guaranteeing their safety. Delivering ungrounded cutaneous cues to the human operator conveys in fact information about the forces exerted at the slave side and does not affect the stability of the control loop. In this work we analyze the feasibility, effectiveness, and implications of providing solely cutaneous feedback in robotic teleoperation. We carried out two peg-in-hole experiments, both in a virtual environment and in a real (teleoperated) environment. Two novel 3-degree-of-freedom fingertip cutaneous displays deliver a suitable amount of cutaneous feedback at the thumb and index fingers. Results assessed the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed approach. Cutaneous feedback was outperformed by full haptic feedback provided by grounded haptic interfaces, but it outperformed conditions providing no force feedback at all. Moreover, cutaneous feedback always kept the system stable, even in the presence of destabilizing factors such as communication delays and hard contacts.

Human Computer Interaction, 2008

2012

In telemanipulation and 3D virtual interactions it is important to transmit force sen- sation from the remote or virtual environment to the operator. Due to the weak points (control issues, robustness, cost) of real force feedback devices, methods where force is rendered on non-native sensory channels have grounds. In this paper, a survey of the related literature is presented and the concept of sensor-bridging type cognitive infocommunications based force reflecting schemes is discussed. A complete experimental infrastructure with hardware and soft- ware components is built providing a background for the investigation of the proposed methods from practical usability aspects. This environment is utilized in a pilot experiment with human participants providing substantial observations on the usability of sensor-bridging type vibro- tactile force feedback methods. The test confirms that vibrotactile glove equipped with shaftless vibration motors can be successfully applied as tactile/...