Development of a hand haptic interface and its basic experimental evaluation

This paper presents a concept for a hand haptic interface for use in a virtual reality environment and describes its basic experimental evaluation. The haptic interface consists of one-dimensional (1D) force display devices for each finger pad and the palm and a 3D fingertip haptic display device. The 1D force display devices are closed-loop controlled by the use of tactile sensors. The specifications of the 1D force display and experiment results at passive touch and active touch when subjects use the hand haptic interface in a virtual reality environment are presented.