Our lab has developed a haptic feedback device to provide ungrounded tactile feedback through the motion of actuated sliding plate contactors. Interaction with a virtual environment is provided to a user through a device equipped with tactile feedback and six degree-of-freedom spatial position sensing. Our tactile feedback device is composed of three sliding plate skin stretch displays positioned around the handle, providing feedback to a user's palm. Our dual-handed tactile feedback system allows independent motion of hands, while providing feedback that creates a kinesthetic experience. We demonstrate fundamental physical interactions such as mass, spring, and damper interactions, which are the building blocks used in every virtual model. Various virtual environments are used to demonstrate physical interactions with objects.

This paper presents the design and development of a novel device for providing tactile feedback in five degrees of freedom (5-DOF). Four translational and four rotational motions of the hand can be communicated to a user using two independently controlled 2-DOF skin stretch feedback devices placed back-to-back. An additional two rotational motions of the hand can be communicated through spiral motions of the two skin stretch feedback devices. The user's index finger and thumb grasp the device at the location of the moving contactor (tactor) of each of the 2-DOF skin stretch displays, respectively. Experiments show user responses to have high directional accuracy (> 98%) for each of the five degrees of freedom communicated by the device. A second experiment also shows a proof of concept for using the back-to-back skin stretch display to guide users' hand motions to match a specified target angle in a one degree-of-freedom wrist rotation task. Findings from this preliminary study will be used in future studies to investigate users' ability to track paths in multiple degrees of freedom or to direct the hand motions of a user, which could be relevant to tasks such as upper limb rehabilitation, swing training, or other motion training.