Development of a miniature pin-array tactile module using elastic and electromagnetic force for mobile devices

In these days, tactile sensation using a vibration motor is recently receiving attention for immersive interaction with mobile devices. However, the vibration motor is not enough to provide detailed texture or small-scale shape. In order to generate various and exiting tactile sensation, this paper presents a new tactile actuator with a solenoid, a permanent magnet and an elastic spring. This paper also proposes a miniature tactile module with the proposed actuators. On constructing a miniature tactile module, we separate the elastic springs in the actuators into several layers to minimize the contactor's gap without decreasing the performance of the tactile module. We conduct experiments to investigate each contactor's output force and the frequency response of the proposed tactile module. Each contactor can generate enough output force to stimulate human's mechanoreceptors. Moreover, since the contactors are actuated in a wide range of frequency, the proposed tactile module can generate various tactile sensations.