Development of wearable fingertip tactile display driven by bowden cables

Abstract

This paper presents the development and human interaction evaluation of a Bowden cable based wearable fingertip tactile display. This device is designed to be used in the field of virtual reality and teleoperation to render different types of tactile sensations such as grip force, slipping, roughness and softness through delivering normal force, skin stretch, tangential movement and vibration indication to the user. This paper evaluates the proposed device’s capability in delivering individual taxel actuation through user testing. A four taxel actuation system fixed to a mild steel skeleton is covered in silicone rubber to ensure wearer comfort. A secondary mechanism is developed to provide sliding and lateral skin stretch sensation to the user. In addition, an 8 mm diameter piezo vibration motor is used to deliver vibration to indicate slipping to the user. The force feedback system consist of four independently operable taxels positioned at 2mm center to center distance on the fingertip. Each taxel was actuated via a Bowden cable connected to a geared DC motor, mounted on a lower arm worn sleeve. A taxel discrimination experiment was done to validate human discrimination ability of each taxel and the results showed that a healthy human can distinguish each taxel with 87.45 % mean accuracy.