A Wearable Haptic Display to Present the Gravity Sensation - Preliminary Observations and Device Design

We propose a wearable, ungrounded haptic display that presents the realistic gravity sensation of a virtual object. We focused on the shearing stress on the fingerpads duo to the weight of the object, and found that the deformation of the fingerpads can generate the reliable gravity sensation even when the proprioceptive sensation on the wrist or arm is absent. This implies that a non-grounded gravity display can be realized by reproducing the fingerpad deformation. According to our observations, we had evaluation tests for device design. We implemented the prototype device which has simple structure using dual motors, and then evaluated the recognition ability of the gravity sensation presented on operator´s fingerpads with this method