A Study of Haptic Representation of Virtual Plain Wall

The purpose of this study is to develop a haptic representation system of virtual wall. The virtual plain wall s ystem requires functions to represent a haptic sense and a wide plain area. To realize a virtual plain wall, a small wall panel was mounted on a 3-axis manipulator, and a 3-axis force sensor was equipped on the wall panel to detect the contact situation between the wall and the user hand. Furthermore, a 3-axis magnetic position sensor was utilized to detect the user hand position in non-contact situation, and the position tracking realized the continuous wide wall. In contact situation, the high stiffness in a normal direction was provided to the wall panel to represent a stiff wall. On the other hand, the low stiffness in tangential direction was given to make the panel move lightly along the direction of the hand movement. The realization of smooth switching between both tracking modes provides user the feel of continuity of virtual wall. The experimental results demonstrated the effectiveness of the hybrid tracking method for a virtual wall display