A 3-DOFs Haptic Feedback Device Equipped Upon Fingertips

In virtual worlds and robotic teleoperation scenarios, this sense of touch must be artificially reconstructed by stimulation of the human body (usually by the hand) to produce the haptic features required for enhanced realism and human performance. With the development of virtual reality and augmented reality technologies, interacting directly with virtual objects with haptic feedback is receiving more and more attention. In this study, a three degree of freedoms (3-DOFs) haptic feedback device was proposed, which can generate a force haptic feedback by skin stretching at the fingertips. The device employed a slider-crank linkage mechanism and a curved- W -shaped five-bar linkage mechanism, with the motor driving the slider-crank linkage mechanism mounted on the back of the finger and the two motors driving the curved- W-shaped five-bar linkage mechanism mounted on both sides of the finger. In addition, this study also analyzes the kinematics and statics of the structure of the proposed device, which provides the actual value of pressure 2.92 N slightly larger than the theoretical value of 2.67 N. It also verifies the reasonableness of the design by analyzing the results and experiments, and the experimental accuracy of the direction recognition gradually becomes larger with the increasing of the value of the condition. This study can contribute to the understanding of human multimodal tactile perception mechanisms on the one hand, and provide motivation for robotics and haptics on the other.