Development of a Hybrid Haptic Device with High Degree of Motion Decoupling

This paper presents a new decoupled hybrid haptic device, which can realize the motion decoupling (1) between three translation motions and three rotation motions and (2) among three translation motions. A passive gravity compensation method based on the add-of-spring principle is taken to make the device force-balanced. The experiment was conducted, which shows that the force-balancing method is effective; about 90% of shaking forces to the round can be cancelled. The experiment was conducted to show the function of this device for a potential task of rehabilitation, interaction of human users with objects in a virtual environment. The result of the experiment shows the promise of this device.