Lateral motion pin device for tactile communication: an approach with DC mini-motors

This paper introduces a new concept of tactile display based on lateral motion of the contact pins. Unlike traditional tactile devices where pins are arranged in an array and move upwards/downwards, a single row of pins moves laterally on a rail to display tactile information as in a 2D matrix. The advantage of this concept is that a row of N actuators can display some information that has been traditionally done with a matrix of NtimesN actuators. An electromechanical actuator based on miniature DC motors was designed and implemented to create such lateral motion. Both tactile display design and actuation approach are presented and discussed.