Development and evaluation of a fingertip operated joystick

Electric wheelchairs fitted with robotic arms would help physically disabled people in their daily lives. The aim of this study is to design a suitable device that can operate a robotic arm. It is desirable that the joystick can operate in six directions intuitively, in each of the three dimensional axes X, Y and Z as well as roll, pitch, and yaw directions. The joystick was small enough to be fingertip-operated via two tri-axial force sensors to control a robotic arm. The robotic arm was able to operate in all six of the desired directions, and its performance was evaluated by computer simulation.