Early research in the area dexterous manipulation revealed that in-hand manipulation is primarily composed of rolling and rotational sliding rolling and rotational sliding, with very little translational sliding. This has motivated the development of a new tactile display meant to provide the sensation of rotational sliding at the fingertips. The goal of this project is to investigate the effect of augmenting a commercial haptic device (a PHANToM) with a device suitable for displaying rotational friction at a user's fingertips. The project is a collaboration between Federico Barbagli, MarkCutkosky, and William Provancher (WillP? ).

In the initial phase of the project we will investigate people's sensitivity to the way rotational friction is displayed. Before making a substantial investment in developing tactile displays, we are doing an evaluation with a single device placed on the index finger of the user. We have programmed a virtual environment that mimics placing a finger on a rotating turntable. In this experiment we will investigate whether relative rotational velocity, total rotation or other factors are important for preserving the realism of these virtual interactions.

• Reference material
  • RotFricDispDeviceDesign

-- WillP? - 16 Nov 2004