The haptic lens - a tactile sensor

Summary form only given. The complete presentation was not made available for publication as part of the conference proceedings. The Haptic Lens is a low-cost hardware and software device to enable the real-time visualization of the haptic sense of pressure. The device and supporting PC-based software enable the visualization and documentation of tactile input for applications such as robotic end-effectors, medical palpation, 3D digitizer, and a novel 3D clay input device for modeling. The sensor is actually a low-resolution 3D surface digitizer. It consists of an easily compressible translucent gray elastomer bounded on one side by an opaque white deformable membrane and on the other side by a clear rigid faceplate. Pressing an object against the white membrane while observing it through the elastomer, one observes a black and white image representing a 3D range or depth map of the applied surface under a specific pressure. The closer the white membrane is pressed to the face plate, the less gray elastomer the light has to pass through, the less attenuation to the image of the white membrane, and hence, the lighter that part will appear. Using a video camera and even illumination, a real-time digitized range image representing the 3D surface in contact with the membrane is produced. This is then converted to a real-time rendered 3D surface with special software.