Design and Evaluation of a Haptic Keypad System for Realistic Touch Interaction

This paper presents design and testing of a haptic keypad system using an array of haptic actuators. The research goals are to construct a prototype haptic keypad system using haptic actuators and to evaluate the performance of the prototype keypad for haptic rendering. To this end, an MR haptic actuator was designed and fabricated such that it can convey realistic force feedback to users. To demonstrate haptic applications of the MR actuator, a haptic keypad system was constructed, which consists of following components: (1) 3 × 3 array of haptic actuators, (2) 3 × 3 array of force sensing resistors (FSR), (3) a controller including a micro-processor, a current amplifier and a wireless communication module, (4) a graphic display unit with PC. After constructing a prototype keypad system, a haptic rendering technology was employed to interface the hardware keypad system with test software (virtual environment). The prototype system enabled human operators to interact with the target contents in a virtual environment more intuitively. The evaluation results show a feasibility of applications of MR fluids-based haptic actuators in real-world mobile applications.