A three-dimensional touch/force display system for haptic interface

It is widely recognized that haptic display is one of the key elements for making the virtual reality technology more powerful, and various force and/or tactile display devices have been developed. However, many of these devices are always in touch with the fingers or hands of the operator and it is impossible for an operator to feel the difference between contact and non-contact state with a virtual object directly from sensory channel of touch in his/her fingers or hands. This paper presents a new three-dimensional haptic display device we have developed for providing both touch and force feeling to operator's fingers. This is an extension of our previous device for two-dimensional application. The control algorithm for the new device and some experimental results are also presented.