Yuta Shiokawa

Realization of button click feeling by use of ultrasonic vibration and force feedback

This paper presents a displaying method of button like click feeling using ultrasonic vibration with amplitude of a few micrometers. Artificial click feeling is displayed by recreating rapid change in force arising from buckling of a mechanical push button utilizing squeeze film effect. First, important factors for displaying click feeling were extracted by analyzing the relationship among force-stroke curve of mechanical buttons and perceived click feeling. Then, click feeling display system was constructed. In the system, stimulation are applied to the operators at both buckling and restitution point. Finally, by conducting several sensory evaluation experiments, it was verified that button like feeling can be displayed without recreating the stroke of mechanical buttons by use of ultrasonic vibration. It was also verified that various artificial click feeling can be displayed by controlling the multiple parameters of the system.

A Virtual Button with Tactile Feedback Using Ultrasonic Vibration

A virtual button with tactile feedback is realized by use of ultrasonic vibration with amplitude of a few micrometers. Button-like click feeling is displayed by recreating rapid change in reaction force arising from buckling of a mechanical push button utilizing squeeze film effect. First, click feeling display system was constructed based on the principle of perceiving click feeling when pushing a mechanical button. In the system, stimulation are applied to the operators at both buckling and restitution point. Then, by conducting several sensory evaluation experiments, the optimum parameters of the ultrasonic vibration was determined to display button-like click feeling. Finally, by conducting usability test, it was verified that the usability of the virtual button was equivalent to that of a mechanical button.

Development of an elastic tactile sensor emulating human fingers for tele-presentation systems

We have developed a tactile sensor for tactile tele-presentation systems by focusing on four features of the human finger considered to play an important role in texture perception; the existence of nails and bone, the multilayer structure of soft tissue, the distribution of mechanoreceptors, and the deployment of epidermal ridges. As a result, the developed sensor could detect roughness, softness and friction known to constitute texture perception of humans with precision equivalent to human. In addition, our sensor can be equipped with robot hands as it satisfies the requirements such as size equivalent to human finger, durability to withstand the wearing for repeated use, correspondence for scanning two dimensions.