A touch and force display system for haptic interface

The importance of force and tactile display in virtual reality technology has been recognized recently and numerous researches have been done including development of various force and/or tactile display devices. However, many of them are always in touch with fingers or hands of operators and it is impossible for an operator to feel difference between contact and noncontact state with a virtual object directly from sensory channel of touch in his/her finger or hand. This paper presents a new haptic display device we have developed which provides both touch and force feeling to the operator's fingers. This device tracks the operator's finger with no contact when the finger is not in contact with any virtual object. It touches and displays force to the finger only when some virtual object is in touch with the finger. A control algorithm for the system to display dynamic virtual objects is given. Preliminary experimental results are also presented.