Teleoperation systems play a crucial role in environments that are challenging for direct human access. In conventional systems, 2D displays lack depth information, making it difficult to accurately determine the position and orientation of objects. Additionally, in precision assembly tasks such as peg-in-hole, task time varies significantly depending on the operator’s level of expertise. To address these challenges, this study proposes the Depth-Assisted Teleoperation System (DATS), which utilizes a Time-of-Flight (ToF) depth camera. DATS provides intuitive depth perception using Segment Anything Model 2 (SAM2)-based mouse interactions on a single-viewpoint monitor. Operators can intuitively recognize the position and orientation of objects through overlaid colors and coordinate values. The core function of DATS is automatic alignment, which moves and aligns the object to the tilted target surface until contact is established. Experimental results demonstrate that the use of DATS in peg-in-hole tasks reduces task completion time by approximately 51% compared to conventional manual operation. Notably, nonexpert operators (Beginners) exhibited more consistent task times across trials. Additionally, operators reported an average cognitive load reduction of 63.8% based on the NASA Task Load Index (NASA-TLX) assessment. These findings indicate that DATS significantly enhances the efficiency and consistency of precision assembly tasks, benefiting both beginners and experts in teleoperation systems.

In this study, a vibrotactile pedestal with multiple actuators is developed and applied to smartphones to create a sense of information according to location and direction. As the main goal is to create a detailed sensation with a limited number of actuators, well-known sensory illusion effects are utilized to modulate vibrotactile stimuli to create an appropriate sensation. The monolithic design concept is utilized to the touch surface of the pedestal for a smooth grip so that there is no interference with screen interaction of the smartphone. Two experiments were conducted to validate whether the developed device could successfully reproduce directional and locational information according to given visual data. The results show that vibrotactile stimulation from the pedestal was useful in intuitively displaying information such as position and direction for smartphone applications. The implications of the work presented in this paper can serve as a stepping stone toward the development of smartphone applications with affluent sensory information through vibrotactile stimulation.

This study presents principle of the camber-flat wing structure conversion mechanism, which is inspired by a dragonfly, and its applicability to MAV. The camber-flat wing structure convert mechanism makes MAV flight using asymmetric flapping pattern through control of angle of attack without complicate structure. This mechanism was inspired from the dragonfly's feature that the camber structure of the wing increases the rigidity of wing structure and makes dragonfly has asymmetric flapping pattern. Experimental results show that MAV has asymmetric flapping pattern that can more stable flight performance when hovering flight with a camber structure and superior performance when the forward flight with a flat structure. The average lift force in the camber wing structure was 0.02N, the average thrust force was 0.02N and the average lift force was 0.011N in the flat wing structure at 20 Hz flapping frequency.

In this paper, we applied famous sensory illusions to generate spatial and directional vibrotactile cues using a vibrotactile cradle for the smart cell-phone. A grooved and slim design is applied to the contact side of the cradle for comfortable gripping, and the contact part consists of twelve vibrotactile areas which can operate independently. To maintain isolation among vibrotactile actuators, the surface of the cover is specially designed to absorb propagating vibration over the surface. The cradle's backside consists of twelve linear resonant actuators, a soft covering intersections and supporting area for actuators. For an evaluation of the developed device, two experiments were conducted to test whether directional information and spatial information according to visual data can be successfully displayed by the developed device. As a result, spatial and directional information is useful for displaying intuitive information for smart cell-phone application with the cradle.

This paper demonstrates Biomimetic fish robot controlling system using by underwater acoustic signal. All the information, results and technical data were collected during implementation in real environment. Through this paper we have focused to create Biomimetic fish robot controlling system with an enhanced design.

The primary purpose of this research is to determine which is more effective, kinesthetic or vibrotactile cues, when presenting spatial information with haptic devices. Recent studies have explored the use of tactile cues; however, they were confined to a unilateral display device. Although many kinesthetic bilateral haptic devices have been developed to provide force feedback on an input handle, a vibrotactile stimulus has not been utilized when presenting directional information on the input handle. This paper attempts to adopt vibrotactile cues to design a bilateral device. In addition, a new six degrees of freedom bilateral haptic device, which provides a spatial sensation on the handle, is proposed. The sphere-shaped handle is, especially, designed to be covered by several vibrating panels. When a specific panel is activated, the user perceives the spatial location of the vibrotactile stimulus from that panel during the input operation. Control schemes that are based on the phantom sensation, one of haptic illusory phenomena, are proposed to achieve fine resolution with a limited number of tactors. Two experiments were conducted, in an effort to compare performance between a kinesthetic and a vibrotactile haptic device. The results showed that the vibrotactile cue provides a better method of perceiving the directional information as compared with kinesthetic feedback.

In this paper, we have applied phantom sensation and sensory saltation to generate spatial and directional information using a vibrotactile display pad providing vibrotactile cues, T-mobile. A grooved and slim design is applied to the contact side of the T-mobile for comfortable gripping, and the contact part consists of 12 vibrotactile panels which can operate independently and separately. To maintain isolation among vibrotactile actuators, the surface of the cover is divided into several pieces. Each vibrating module consists of a linear resonant vibrational motor, a section of covering surface, and a vibration isolator. As an evaluation of the developed device, two experiments were conducted to test whether directional information and spatial information can be successfully displayed by the device. As a result, spatial and directional information is useful for displaying intuitive information for hand-held navigation with vibrotactile feedback.

Many studies have explored the use of tactile cues, however they were confined to the unilateral display device. Although lots of bilateral haptic devices have been developed to provide a guiding force on an input handle, however, a vibrotactile stimuli has not been tried to present directional information on the handle. This research introduces an attempt to combine a tactile display with an input device. A new 6DOF bilateral haptic device, which provides a spatial sensation on the handle using vibrotactile display, is proposed in this research. The sphere-shape handle is specially designed to be covered with several pieces of vibrating panels. When a specific panel is activated, the user perceives the spatial location of the vibrotactile stimulus during an input operation. This paper introduces the design of the proposed device, including the selection guide of the dimension, location, and number of vibrotactile panels. The method for combination of vibrotactile stimulus and the way to achieve fine resolution with small number of tactors are discussed. Experimental results show that the users can reliably perceive the directional information using the proposed device. An application for teleoperation of a robot proves the effectiveness and the usefulness of the proposed bilateral device.

In this paper, multi-fingered tactile display modules are proposed. Each tactile display module is comprised of a 4 times 4 piezoelectric ultrasonic actuator array with a spatial resolution of 1.5 mm and a temporal resolution of 20 Hz. The objective of this research is to build a small and lightweight tactile display system so that the system including the display modules and complete controller parts is wearable by a user. It was found that various types of texture information can be generated using a static indentation or through the vibration of each pin. Three tactile display modules were utilized for interaction with a 3D virtual environment. As the developed tactile display modules consume less power and are connected wirelessly to a host PC, the system is applicable to various types of texture representation systems.

In this paper, a compact tactile display which consists of multiple vibrotactile actuators with 4-different vibrotactile unbalanced masses and a Peltier thermoelectric module is proposed. By stimulating 2 different sensory channels including mechanoreceptors and thermoreceptor simultaneously, surface texture and material composition can be displayed using the implemented device. 3 experiments were conducted for the performance evaluation of the proposed device through discriminating various patterned textures. Experimental results show that the developed device can be used to display surface texture and temperature together and suggest the possibility of implementing a small-sized, multi-fingered tactile display device.

This paper proposes a tactile display device providing pin-array type tactile feedback and thermal feedback. The pin-array type tactile display is composed of a 6times5 pin-array that is actuated by 30 piezoelectric bimorphs. Micro shape and vibrotactile feedback can be generated by the device, and various planar distributed patterns can be displayed as can braille cell patterns. The thermal feedback device is composed of a thin film resistance temperature detector (RTD), a Peltier thermoelectric heat pump and a water cooling jacket. Users can discriminate among different materials by considering the temperature variation that can be sensed as they touch an object's surface. This paper also includes an experimental evaluation of the device to prove effectiveness of displaying textures. Material property discriminating evaluation was conducted using thermal feedback device that displays simulated temperature profile. To determine the relation between stimulated area and thermal perception sensitivity, a thermal perception experimental setup is developed and the experimental method is described

The sense of touch provides humans with the ability to determine the shape and surface properties of objects. Although touch is an important part of daily life for object manipulation and exploration tasks, users are, unfortunately, rarely provided with the opportunity to use their sense of touch while interacting with computers. To rectify this, this article presents a novel haptic mouse system that can be used as a human-computer interface with the capability for holistic haptic feedback, including contact force, surface properties, and thermal feedback. The system is composed of 3 main parts. First, the 5-bar mechanism, which comprises the lowermost part of the mouse's body, has been adapted to realize 2-DOF translational force feedback. This mechanism helps the user to feel the contact force, stiffness, and size of a virtual object while exploring a graphical environment. Second, a small tactile display was developed. It has a planar-distributed pin array, and it can represent microscale shapes with various surfaces, such as gratings, grooves, patterns, shapes of icons, and Braille, thereby providing the user with cutaneous stimuli. Third, because the ability to sense temperature is an important factor in the discrimination of the surface property of an object, thermal feedback is provided to the user. The performance of each part and their combinations has been evaluated, and the system shows a remarkable ability to provide users with tactual information while they simply use the mouse without any additional interfaces.

In this paper, we suggest a mouse-type integrated tactile display system that provides kinesthetic force, distributed pressure, vibration and skin stretch. The system consists of two parts: a 2-DOF force feedback mechanism for kinesthetic force display and a tactile display part for providing normal stimulation to the skin and the lateral skin stretch. A tactile display device, using eight piezoelectric bimorphs and a linear actuator, is fabricated and attached to a 2-DOF translational force feedback device to simultaneously simulate the texture and stiffness of the object. The developed system was adopted as a test bed to study the factors affecting perception of surface properties. We investigate three things: effective stimulating methods, limitation of surface discrimination based on kinesthetic force and the effectiveness of combining kinesthetic force feedback with tactile feedback. Seven kinds of stimulating methods are investigated to study effective methods in simulating texture. In addition, in order to find out the role of skin stretch during perceiving texture, the discernment abilities of active touch (rubbing), laterally-active-display and moving-wave-form have been compared.

This paper describes a novel haptic mouse system which conveys kinesthetic and tactile information simultaneously in virtual environments. The haptic mouse system can provide 2-DOF translational force feedback, vibration, normal pressure, skin stretch and thermal feedback, all of which are important physical quantities of sensing object's shape, stiffness and surface properties. The system can simulate small scale shapes and roughness of surface textures using cutaneous cues generated by individual drives of a 6/spl times/8 pin array. Since thermal differences among surfaces of virtual objects is one of dominant factors in perceiving texture, a thermal feedback unit composed of a heat conduction plate and a temperature sensor is also embedded into the tactile display system. The developed system can be used as a testbed in psychophysical study on tactile perception. We have investigated the influence of the frequency variation on perceived roughness using the haptic mouse system since vibrotaction has been considered as a key factor affecting perception of fine textures by physiology researchers. In order to find out the relation of roughness and vibration, two psychophysical experiments have been performed. The correlation between the vibration frequency and the texture shows that there are certain transitions of perceived roughness. The experimental results yield that the vibrating stimulus is more effective for displaying a fine surface than static displacement display, and it shows a possibility to display finer texture, exceeding the physical limitation of the device.

This paper presents the KAIST interactive bicycle racing simulator system, which consists of a pair of bicycle simulators. The rider on the racing simulator experiences realistic sensations of motion, while being able to see the other bicycle simulator and having the audio-visual experience of riding in a velodrome or on the KAIST campus. The 2nd bicycle of the racing simulator system consists of a bicycle, a 4-DOF platform, a handlebar and a pedal resistance system to generate motion feelings; a real-time visual simulator a HMD and beam projection system; and a 3D sound system. The system has an integrating control network with an AOIM (Area Of Interest Management) based network structure for multiple simulators.

This paper presents key technologies and system integration issues of the KAIST interactive bicycle simulator. The rider on the bicycle feels the motion and has the visual experience as if he/she is riding in the campus of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. The simulator consists of a bicycle, a Stewart platform, a magnetorheological handle, a pedal resistance system to generate motion feelings, a real-time visual simulator and projection system, sub-controllers and an integrating control network.