Haptic display device with fingertip presser for motion/force teaching to human

The purpose of this study is to establish a method of virtual-reality-mediated motion/force teaching from human teacher to human "teachee". For effective teaching, position and force information of the teacher's action have to be communicated to the teachee. Position information is easy to display, but force information is difficult to display by conventional haptic devices. In this paper, we propose a new type of haptic interface with fingertip presser which could make it possible to display both position and force information. The teacher's finger force of pushing a surface is displayed as a mechanical pressing force onto the teachee's fingertip, and position is displayed by active multijoint linkage. The results of basic experiments show that the proposed method is effective as a media of motion/force teaching, but reveal some limitations.