A Soft Pneumatic Haptic Actuator Mechanically Programmed for Providing Mechanotactile Feedback
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MRS Advances © 2019 Materials Research Society DOI: 10.1557/adv.2019.70
A Soft Pneumatic Haptic Actuator Mechanically Programmed for Providing Mechanotactile Feedback Juan J. Huaroto1, Victor Ticllacuri1, Etsel Suarez1, Robert Ccorahua1, and Emir A. Vela1,2 1
Department of Engineering, School of Engineering, Facultad de Ciencias y Filosofia, and Laboratorios de Investigacion y Desarrollo - LID, Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia, Lima, Peru.
2
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at The University of New Mexico, USA.
ABSTRACT
Tactile sense provides us with the necessary information and feedback to determined tasks. Within this context, haptic devices represent a growing and highly interesting field to be included in biomedical devices, teleoperation applications, and video games. These devices are usually developed with rigid materials, motors, and mechanisms to provide tactile feedback to individuals that corresponds to a defined task, producing pressure, tangential force or vibrations as stimuli on the skin. Here, we present a prototype of a soft pneumatic haptic device based on an inflatable hyperelastic membrane, that can provide two stimuli over skin such as pression and traction with only one input of energy. The device was fabricated using different types of silicone materials and membrane shapes. This exhibits experimentally a maximum vertical deformation of 13 mm and a tangential displacement of 10 mm at 7 kPa. These two mechanically programmed movements open the possibility of using this technology in mechano-tactile feedback for wearable devices, with low-cost hardware, soft interaction between devices and skin, and lightweight.
INTRODUCTION Haptic perception provides us tactile and kinesthetic sensations [1]. Tactile sensations such as pressure, stretch, vibrations are sensed due to nerve endings, small cells and corpuscles, located on the human skin, called mechanoreceptors [2]. In recent years, haptics has been used in different applications such as biomedical devices, teleoperation, computer games, among others. Haptic biomedical devices mainly provide tactile feedback over the human skin as vibrotactile [3], mechanotactile [4] or both [5,6],
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to augment users’ sensitivity. For example, for a better manipulation of objects in virtual environments, or developing devices to provide tactile feedback as tangential force, pressure and vibrations to amputee individuals [7-10]. Most haptic devices are stiff, heavy, and are composed of complex mechanisms and motors to enable one kind of movement. Soft materials like rubber and silicones have shown remarkable properties: comfortability, safety, aesthetics and reliability in benefit of this sort of devices which exploit the inherent compliance of soft materials [11]. There exist different operating
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