Preliminary Design of a Flexible Haptic Surface

Abstract

AbstractThis paper presents the preliminary development of a flexible haptic surface in order to produce texture rendering on a large conformable area. For this purpose, Haptic Pixels vibrating at ultrasonic frequencies are actuated by piezoelectric elements and implanted on a flexible matrix. The design leads to square glass plates of 10 $$\times $$ × 10 mm$$^2$$ 2 with a thickness of 500 $$\upmu $$ μ m, actuated by PZT ceramics with a thickness of 200 $$\upmu $$ μ m and a radius of 2.5 mm bonded on a 100 $$\upmu $$ μ m thick PEEK film. Electromechanical characterizations validate the design. The PEEK film between two pixels is exploited to separate them, to obtain the flexibility of the surface and to create an area of friction reduction with a stationary wave. Haptic evaluations are carried out to confirm the performances of the approach on a Haptic Pixel.