Development of a wearable haptic device with pneumatic artificial muscles and MR brake

Desktop haptic device has been developed in the field of rehabilitation and entertainment. However, the desktop type restrains human´s movement. Therefore, it is difficult to receive force sense information, moving to wide range position and posture. In this study, we developed a 1-DOF wearable haptic device with pneumatic artificial muscles and a MR brake. These smart actuators have high power density and change its output force structurally. Therefore, this haptic device can render various force sense such as elasticity, friction and viscosity. In this abstract, we describe two experiments rendering elasticity and friction to evaluate the performance of the device.