Harold's purple crayon rendered in haptics: Large-stroke, handheld ballpoint force feedback

An elusive and audacious vision in haptics is the rendering of forces “in the large” - to feel sensations in large gestures, anywhere and anytime. The reality is that delivering force feedback in informal settings and diverse environments suffers from linked constraints. Producing force requires physical grounding, which limits workspace size; meanwhile, expansion impacts affordability and application versatility. Inspired by needs for haptic support of large motions on a surface in applications like embodied conceptual learning, commercial design, and 2D virtual / augmented reality, we present the ballpoint drive. This novel approach circumvents conventional constraints by imposing a new one: motion re stricted to rolling on an arbitrary two dimensional surface, and grounding forces generated through friction. We analyze the ballpoint's design considerations in the context of our framing applications, describe a first prototype and its performance, and assess its potential for further development.