• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2005.06a
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• pp.888-891
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• 2005

In this paper, the prototype of a walking guide robot with tactile display is introduced, and the psychophysical experiment of the tactile recognition for a tactile display is carried out and analyzed. The objective of this research is the development of a walking guide robot for the blind to walk safely. A walking guide robot consists of a guide vehicle and a tactile display device. A guide vehicle, located in the front of the walking blind, detects the obstacle using ultrasonic sensors and offers the information of position and walking direction acquired from GPS module to the walking blind by voice. The tactile display device, located in the handle which is connected with the guide vehicle by cane, offers the processed obstacle information such as position, size, moving, shape of obstacle and safe path, etc. The psychophysical experiments for the threshold of perception and recognition ability of tactile stimulation are carried out by the estimation of the subject group. As a result the appropriate tactile stimulus intensity and frequency to recognize tactile stimulation effectively are discussed and derived.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea CI
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• v.48 no.2
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• pp.1-8
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• 2011

In this paper, we propose a haptic display system that can convert Braille and tactual map(braille map) to tactile information recognizable through sense of touch almost in real-time. The proposed system consists of a haptic display hardware device, which actually delivers tactile signal to visually impaired people, and a device control software program, which converts Braille and tactile information to tactile signal and transfers it to the hardware device. Experimental evaluations of the proposed system were performed with 10 visually impaired persons. Experimental results show that the proposed system can provide similar Braille recognition rate and speed to those of existing Braille information devices. In addition, the proposed system converts tactile information to tactile signal under maximum 1.1 seconds, so that it can provide graphic information in almost real-time which is not possible with existing tactile devices, such as Braille printer.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.9 no.8
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• pp.592-599
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• 2003

As one of the Principal modalities of human sensation, tactile feel is prerequisite for building wide variety of applications such as telemanipulation, virtual reality and medical engineering. A dynamic Braille display device based on a polymer actuator is presented. The actuator, often called artificial muscle actuator has advantageous features over the existing methods in terms of intrinsic softness, ease of fabrication, cost-effectiveness and miniaturization. The principles of actuation with dielectric elastomer is introduced, and necessary considerations on the design of a tactile display device are discussed. The design of the device is described in detail including the fabrication process and driving electronics. Also, preliminary results of experiments are given to evaluate its performance.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.37 no.6
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• pp.545-550
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• 2013

We present a tactile information transceiver using a friction-tunable slider-pad. While previous tactile information devices were focused on either input or output functions, the present device offers lateral position/vertical direction detection and texture expression. In characterizing the tactile input performance, we measured the capacitance change due to the displacement of the slider-pad. The measured difference for a z-axis click was 0.146 nF/$40{\mu}m$ when the x-y axis navigation showed 0.09 nF/$750{\mu}m$ difference. In characterizing the texture expression, we measured the lateral force due to a normal load. We applied a voltage between parallel electrodes to induce electrostatic attraction in DC and AC voltages. We measured the friction under identical fingertip action conditions, and obtained friction in the range of 32-152 mN and lateral vibration in the force range of 128.1 mN at 60 V, 2 Hz. The proposed device can be applied to integrated tactile interface devices for mobile appliances.

• ETRI Journal
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• v.36 no.6
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• pp.979-987
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• 2014

This paper describes new tactile feedback patterns and the effect of their input performance for a button GUI activated by a tap gesture on mobile touch devices. Based on an analysis of touch interaction and informal user tests, several tactile feedback patterns were designed. Using these patterns, three user experiments were performed to investigate appropriate tactile feedback patterns and their input performance during interaction with a touch button. The results showed that a tactile pattern responding to each touch and release gesture with a rapid response time and short falling time provides the feeling of physically clicking a button. The suggested tactile feedback pattern has a significantly positive effect on the number of typing errors and typing task completion time compared to the performance when no feedback is provided.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.33 no.1
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• pp.17-22
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• 2016

In smart factories, the entire manufacturing process from design to the final product is simulated in a virtual manufacturing environment and optimized before starting production. Suppliers and customers make decisions based on the simulation results. Therefore, effective rendering of the information of the virtual products to suppliers and customers is essential for this manufacturing paradigm. In this study, a method of rendering the surface roughness of the virtual products using a tactile display is presented. A tactile display device comprising a $3{\times}3$ array of individually controlled piezoelectric stack actuators is constructed. The surface topology of the virtual products is rendered directly by controlling the piezoelectric stack actuators. A series of experiments is performed to evaluate the performance of the tactile display device. An electrical discharge machined surface is rendered using the proposed method.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.11 no.5
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• pp.451-456
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• 2005

This paper describes three kinds of experiments and analysis of their results related to human tactile sensitivity using an integrated tactile display system. The device can provide vibration, normal pressure and lateral slip/stretch which are important physical quantities to sense texture. We have tried to find out the efficient method of stimulating, limitation of surface discrimination by kinesthetic farce feedback and the effectiveness of the combination of kinesthetic force and tactile feedback. Seven kinds of different stimulating methods were carried out and they are single or combination of the kinesthetic force, normal static pressure, vibration, active/passive shear and moving wave. Both prototype specimen and stimulus using tactile display were provided to all examinees and they were allowed to answer the most similar sample. The experimental results show that static pressure is proper stimulus for the display of micro shape of the surface and vibrating stimulus is more effective for the display of fine surface. And the sensitivities of active touch and passive touch are compared. Since kinesthetic force feedback is appropriate to display shape and stiffness of an object, but roughness display has a limitation of resolution, the concurrent providing methods of kinesthetic and tactile feedback are applied to simulate physical properties during touching an object.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 1997.10a
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• pp.1285-1288
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• 1997

The basic technology of virtual reality can be described as the cognition of the condition change in virtual world by stimulating the visual, auditory, kinesthetic and tactile sensation. Among these, the kinesthetic and tactile sensation is one of the most important things to recognize the interaction. In this paper, it is addressed the haptic device which help the human feel the sense of the operator, and is designed in modular type to expand for five fingers later. the haptic device is driven by tendon and ultrasonic motors located in the wrist part. Each joint is actuated by coupled tendons and adopts more actrator by one than the number of the joints, called 'N+1 type'. The haptic device adopts metamorphic 4-bar linkage structure and the length of linkages, shape and the location of joint displacement sensor are optimized through the analysis.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.20 no.8
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• pp.807-814
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• 2014

In this paper, we proposed a haptic navigation system which used the tactile data for the user guides of the mobile robot to the reference point via tele-operation in unknown blind environment. This navigation system can enable a mobile robot to avoid obstacles and move to the reference point, according to the direction provided by the device guides through a haptic device consisting of a vibration motor in a blind environment. There are a great deal of obstacles in real environments, and so mobile robots can avoid obstacles by recognizing the exact position of each obstacle through the superposition of an ultrasonic sensor. The navigation system determines the direction of obstacle avoidance through an avoidance algorithm that uses virtual impedance, and lets users know the position of obstacles and the direction of the avoidance through the haptic device consisting of 5 vibration motors. By letting users know intuitionally, it lets the mobile robot precisely reach the reference point in unknown blind environment. This haptic device can implement a haptic navigation system through the tactile sensor data.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.10 no.11
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• pp.961-970
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• 2004

Tactile sensation is one of the most important sensory functions along with the auditory sensation for the visually impaired since it replaces the visual one of the persons with sight. In this paper, we present a tactile display device as a dynamic Braille display that is the unique tool f3r exchanging information among them. The tactile cell of the Braille display proposed is based on the dielectric elastomer, which is one of the electroactive polymers. It has advantageous features over the existing ones with respect to intrinsic softness, ease of fabrication, cost effectiveness and miniaturization. We introduce a new idea for actuation as well as additional considerations such as the driving circuit that makes it possible to drive multiple tactile cells in a high speed. Also, we describe the actuating mechanism of the Braille pin in details capable of realizing the enhanced spatial density of the tactile cells. Finally, results of psychophysical experiments are given to evaluate its effectiveness.