Developing hybrid force feedback: coupling brakes and motors can reduce the total actuator size and improve haptics quality

Hand-worn haptic systems must be able to produce high-quality haptics while also being lightweight and energy-efficient. In order to meet market expectations, research is being done into novel drivetrains that may be implemented in hand worn devices. This is being pushed forward by the growing demand in the virtual reality sector, which is...

Design with Hands: A haptic feedback device for a virtual reality dataglove

This report describes the creation of a haptic feedback device for virtual reality computer aided design applications using the Manus VR Gloves.

Increasing Task-Sharing Performance by Haptically Assisting a Tunnel-in-the-Sky Approach

To investigate the effects of haptic feedback on the task-sharing performance during approach when using a Tunnel-in- the-Sky display, a within-subject simulated experiment with 12 participants was conducted in the SIMONA Research Simulator at Delft University of Technology. The experiment consisted of a primary Tunnel-in-the-Sky tracking task,...

Effective Human-Machine Interfaces for Aerial Telemanipulation

Most ground robots deployed in disaster areas have been of limited use mainly because of their reduced mobility in degraded environments. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have considerable mobility benefits over ground robots, however they are currently only used for providing aerial views and often lack any manipulation capabilities, despite...

Designing Haptic Graphics for Mathematics: Towards Accessible Math Education for Blind Students

Currently 75% of children with a visual impairment attend regular schools. Schools are digitizing, which poses both advantages as well as threads to the education of students who are blind. With help of VoiceOver or refreshable braille displays, digital textual information has become accessible to the student, however, there is no solution...

Upper Body Orthotics for Wearable Haptic Robots

The following thesis reports the graduation project done at the ESA Telerobotics & Haptics Lab by the Industrial Design Engineering student Emiel den Exter. The assignment was to design a set of upper body orthoses for astronauts, which are used to attach force-reflecting arm-exoskeletons to the human body. Exoskeletons are lightweight robotics...

Cogging compensation in embedded brushless motor control for haptics applications

For the development of a space qualified, 7 degrees of freedom, haptic arm exoskeleton a brushless DC motor with high torque production, power density and efficiency was selected. However, the attraction of the rotor magnets to the stator teeth introduces an additive, position dependent, torque disturbance on the motor shaft called cogging...

Epidural Needle Insertion Simulator: A device for training resident anaesthesiologists

Epidural anaesthesia is a pain relief technique commonly performed on patients in labor. It requires insertion of a needle into patients back into the epidural space of the spine and inject anaesthetic. It is a blind procedure and anaesthesiologists rely only on the forces felt during needle insertion to determine the position of the needle tip....

Improving the Quality of Haptic Feedback Yields Only Marginal Improvements in Teleoperated Task Performance

In teleoperations, haptic feedback allows the human operator to touch the remote environment. Yet it is only partially understood to what extent the quality of haptic feedback contributes to human-in-the-loop task performance. This paper presents a human factors experiment in which telemanipulated task performance is assessed for three stages of...

Jacket for people with balancing problems

This report concerns the development of a jacket for people with balance problems. Patients with failing balance organs can have serious difficulty to maintain their balance. The balance jacket contains a sensor and a belt of actuators. The sensor determines the orientation of the patient and provised feedback to the jacket. The jacket contains...

The tactile window; a haptic tool for material selection

This report presents the design of a haptic tool for designers. The tool should aid them in material selection for product experience and fit in an advanced design studio known as the Tangible Virtual Reality environment. The field of haptics and existing haptic devices were studied, as well as the Tangible Virtual Reality environment....