This paper presents HaptiCraft, a modular handheld haptic controller designed to replicate the appearance, mass distribution, and multimodal haptic properties of virtual objects. HaptiCraft consists of many modules that provide distinct functions for assembly and multimodal haptic feedback, supporting five types: vibration, impact, thermal, variable inertia, and variable stiffness. Users can readily assemble these modules to create a controller tailored to their needs. To simplify the design process, especially for novice users, we also provide a graphical authoring tool and assess its usability. Finally, we evaluate the system's effectiveness through various virtual reality (VR) scenarios, demonstrating that HaptiCraft significantly enhances user experience. HaptiCraft makes a substantial contribution to the field of VR handheld controllers by offering comprehensive support for shape-changing, variable inertia, and rich multimodal haptic feedback, coupled with an effective authoring method.

This paper presents a tiny haptic interaction module which generates high resistive torque for VR fishing leisure activity. The presented haptic interaction module was developed by magnetic rheological fluids and optimizing its structure. The measured haptic torque was varied from 0.3 N·cm to 2.4 N·cm as the applied voltage increased from 0 V to 5 V. The performance of the proposed actuator was qualitatively evaluated by constructing virtual fishing environment where a user can feel not only the weight of a target object but also its motion.

With recent strong interests in flexible displays and wearable devices allowing them to be mechanically robust against deformation, sensors and actuators for human-machine interfaces are required to be soft to be embedded into flexible mechanisms. We introduce recent approaches in soft and flexible sensors and actuators, and discuss current issues to be solved in the topics. An open discussion will take place on the future of these types of sensors and actuators for human-robot interaction systems.

The rapid development of nano technology and mobile devices has created high demand for shape changing mobile devices in order to provide users with more functions in less space and improved usability. However, the fundamental incompatibility between flexible displays and rigid actuator components has brought a huge barrier for commercialization of this technology. This paper presents a flexible and bendable vibrotactile actuator that can be easily applied to shape changing mobile devices. The proposed vibrotactile actuator is made with an electro-conductive membrane based on polyurethane, a base membrane, and an airgap. Actuation of the proposed actuator is controlled by a polarity of both charged membranes and the actuator performance can be modulated by increasing level of biased electric potential. A user experiment showed that the proposed actuator can provide vibrations with sufficient strength for perception.

This paper proposes a new interactive interface TAXEL, which aims at developing a reconfigurable self-morphing visio-haptic interface. We first present the overall architecture and concept of a self-morphing visuo-haptic interface. Key hardware components are developed and tested, including three tactile actuators using a piezoelectric active linear actuator, a passive MR fluid actuator, and a thin film-type actuator, respectively, and a flexible visual display based on the light-waveguide technology. Using the developed components, a tactile platform that includes a 8×16 array of the linear actuators is implemented for a proof of concept. A rendering engine is also designed for the tactile platform with emphasis on the use of haptic feedback together with GUI. We also carried out a user study with virtual button simulation as a benchmark to evaluate the performance of the TAXEL tactile platform. Lastly, an integrated system with a visual display is demonstrated along with several application examples.

This paper presents a new subminiature impact type actuator which creates the haptic sensation in a mobile device. Recently, linear resonance actuators (LRA) are widely used. One of the key differences between an LRA and a traditional eccentric motor is that the LRA generates the vibrotactile sensation through resonance for minimizing response time. The strategy of operation near the resonant frequency, however, brought a new issue for creating vibrotactile sensation which can be strong enough to feel in arbitrary frequency. In order to achieve this issue, we adopt an unstable structure to amplify impact force and to reduce response rate. Due to the impact with fast rising and falling time in the proposed impact actuator, the available strong impact vibration is created over wide frequency range from 0Hz to 100Hz. The impact vibration generated from the proposed actuator is suitable for reproducing realistic button sensation and creating various vibration patterns in mobile devices.

In interacting with a soft object, both visual and haptic senses play major role in providing the characteristics of the object. While visual feedback comes from the appearance of the overall shape, haptic feedback comes largely from the localized internal composition. However, it has been a common practice to represent the object with one model for both processing shape de formation and computing the feedback force, making it much challenging work to achieve real-time simulation of a soft and especially non-homogeneous object. In this paper, we claim that it may be sufficient to represent the graphical visual model as a surface model whereas it is necessary to represent the haptic model as a volumetric model. We propose, therefore, a hybrid model where volumetric haptic model and surface graphical model coexist. For constructing hybrid model, we employ S-chain model to compute the haptic behavior and mass-spring model to calculate graphic behavior. We conduct experiments with volumetric human liver model at a haptic update rate of 1000 Hz and graphic update rate of 30 Hz. The experimental results show that our proposed model satisfies the real-time performance and provides the realistic sense to be useful for a virtual reality application.