Developing a stick-slip based kinesthetic touchscreen system for realtime stylus manipulation

Continuing our previous work on developing comprehensive haptic feedback mechanisms for touchscreen based devices, this research elaborates how it is possible to incorporate the stick-slip phenomenon onto a mobile touchscreen to provide kinesthetic feedback for multimodal user interaction. Research has already proven that kinesthetic feedback is greatly beneficial in a wide range of activities, especially within learning environments. Our research illustrates how we can develop kinesthetic feedback in real time haptic applications which use stylus based touchscreen interaction. Traditional kinesthetic feedback techniques require linkage-based high powered multi-dimensional manipulators (e.g. Phantom devices) which yet cannot be replicated on mobile devices. Prototypes discussed in this paper resolve the issue by expanding the approach introduced by Reznik and Canny in their “Universal Planar Manipulator” to generate kinesthetic afferentation on mobile touchscreens. Using this mechanism the authors were able to develop a series of prototypes and explore stick-slip effect to control directional forces on top of a Microsoft Surface Pro 3 tablet and manipulate the provided physical stylus according to its position in the virtual environment. Furthermore, the research also evaluated various actuator properties needed to provide an efficient and stable stick-slip touchscreen overlay for any touchscreen based system.