Creating multi-touch haptic feedback on an electrostatic tactile display

Abstract

This study is composed of two main parts. In the first part, we present single touch electrostatic tactile display analysis and modelling together with some prelim inary observation on conventional rendering methods. Data-driven texture rendering method is introduced and examined in two steps. First, accelerations occurring due to sliding a tool on three different surfaces are measured, and then the collected data are replayed on an electrostatic tactile display. Second, data from the Penn Haptic Texture Toolkit (HaTT) are used to generate virtual textures on the same tactile dis play. Psychophysical experiments are carried out for both steps. The results show that the virtual textures generated using the data-driven method are mostly similar to the real textures in comparison to conventional method of rendering. Together with the supporting results from the multidimensional scaling (MDS) analysis, it is shown that the data-driven method is a viable solution for realistic texture rendering. In the second part, we propose a method and present a tactile display prototype to create multi-touch haptic feedback using electrostatic attraction. The method relies on applying high-voltage AC signals on certain orthogonal electrode lines resulting in perceivable changes of friction at the intersection points. Generated surface friction on the prototype is measured with a planar tribometer. Results show that multiple localized friction spots can be generated with the proposed method. A user study is also performed to test the prototype in a multi-touch scenario where a virtual tex ture is explored by two fingers simultaneously. Quantitative and qualitative analyses demonstrate the feasibility of creating multi-touch haptic feedback on an electrostatic tactile display.