Haptic Desktop for Office Automation and Assisted Design

The present paper describes the conceptual and technical design of a new multimodal device named Haptic Desktop System (HDS). Haptic Desktop System is an integrated system, which merges haptic functionalities, and VDT systems into one. Specific care has been given to HDS design for enhancing and improving human-computer interaction from the following points of view: esthetical, ergonomic and functional. In order to improve the quality of the interaction, the HDS fully integrates proprioceptive, visual, audio and haptic functionalities, into a desk while minimizing the visual interference of the physical components. In the proposed approach classic input devices (i.e. keyboard and mouse) have been replaced by new features integrated within audio and haptic. Such features allow commanding and rendering natural force stimuli in such a way that they are completely coherent and co-located with respect to the visual information. The new features of the HDS are designed for reducing considerably the mental load required to the users during interaction operations. In the present paper the design guidelines and the achieved results are reported.