Haptic Touchscreens
Friction-modulating touchscreens create the illusion of touching textured surfaces by rapidly changing the friction coefficient between the screen and a user’s finger, often using a technique called electroadhesion. Ongoing research topics include:
- Creating and modulating new friction patterns to display a wide array of distinguishable and intuitive haptic effects
- Developing new methods of surface actuation to engage more types of nerve endings and enhance realism of haptic effects
Wearables for Texture Display
Virtual reality headsets provide rich visual and auditory stimuli, but little haptic feedback besides rudimentary effects through handheld controllers.
Recent interest has turned towards low-profile wearable devices that can provide on-demand haptic stimulation to the body during AR and VR interactions, without limiting dexterity or range of motion.
We are interested in developing wearables that provide vibration-based sensations conveying the texture and material properties of different VR objects while optimizing actuator type, control, and placement.
To create a vibration-based texture sensation, we need to mimic the vibrations induced in the skin during texture exploration. The characteristics of this vibration depend on the texture and – more importantly – on our sliding speed.
The lack of such complex sensations in AR and VR leaves virtual reality interactions unnatural and inanimate. Currently, we are exploring the possibility of developing a wearable device that can create intuitive and convincing illusions of texture perception by: –
- Leveraging our understanding of touch perception,
- Finding ways to create a wide range of sensations with frequency and amplitude modulation schemes,
- Integrating hand tracking with the device to make the sensation responsive to the user’s movement.