Wearable haptic devices for social and virtual interaction
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Augmented and virtual reality allow users to visually experience fantastic artificial environments. Haptic technology increases immersion and realism in these environments by allowing users to touch and interact with virtual objects. For example, using haptic technology, surgeons can practice surgical tasks in simulation and people can virtually feel a comforting touch from loved ones at distant locations. Specifically, haptic technology is the design of devices to communicate information through touch. The information could be a message from a person, robot, or virtual avatar, or the mechanical properties of a virtual object. Wearable haptic technology allows users to receive haptic information without constraining their movement in space, giving them the ability to perform other tasks simultaneously. In this talk, I will present three strategies that can be used to increase the amount of information communicated by a wearable haptic device. First, we describe, demonstrate, and validate a device framework for a body-mounted vibrotactile display. The display allows users to receive haptic signals at the forearm, where the device is mounted, and at the fingertips when the user chooses. We show that stimulating the forearm and fingertips simultaneously does not affect user performance compared to stimulating the fingertips alone when large amplitude signals are used. The display is wearable yet allows for communicating signals to the fingertips, which have the densest packing of mechanoreceptors, without impeding manipulation tasks by mounting the display directly to the finger. Next, we record subject's expressing a set of emotions to a body-mounted pressure sensor array. We describe a data-driven method to produce haptic signals based on the data recordings and we validate that the haptic signals successfully communicate emotions in a user study with a physical haptic device. The results show that a discrete representation of touch signals can be recorded and used to relay emotions to humans without training. Finally, we fabricate two 4-degree-of-freedom origami haptic devices for the fingertip that can deliver normal force, shear force, and torsion. We evaluate the performance of each device via analysis of their workspace, bandwidth, and force output. The two devices are created using novel manufacturing processes that enable affordable and scalable haptic technology for the fingertip or other locations on the body. Classically, haptic signals are designed by hand by haptics researchers or study participants; here I present strategies that enable the future of content creation for haptic devices. The combination of a body-mounted framework, a data driven approach for effective haptic signal generation, and novel 4-degree-of-freedom fingertip devices comprise a suite of hardware and software that creates compelling and lightweight wearable technology
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2021; ©2021 |
| Publication date | 2021; 2021 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Williams, Sophia Rose |
|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | Okamura, Allison |
| Thesis advisor | Okamura, Allison |
| Thesis advisor | Cutkosky, Mark R |
| Thesis advisor | Fan, Jonathan Albert |
| Thesis advisor | Wetzstein, Gordon |
| Degree committee member | Cutkosky, Mark R |
| Degree committee member | Fan, Jonathan Albert |
| Degree committee member | Wetzstein, Gordon |
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Electrical Engineering |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Sophia R. Williams |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Electrical Engineering |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2021 |
| Location | https://purl.stanford.edu/cz370bh8678 |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2021 by Sophia Rose Williams
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
Also listed in
Loading usage metrics...