HARVEST: High-Resolution Haptic Vest and Fingertip Sensing Glove That Transfers Tactile Sensation of Fingers to the Back

Abstract

Human fingertips are densely populated with tactile receptors and are hence incredibly sensitive. However, wearing gloves on the fingers drastically reduces the tactile information available to the fingertips, such as the texture and shape of the object, and makes it difficult to perform dexterous work. As a solution, in this study, we developed a high-resolution haptic vest that transfers the tactile sensation of the fingertips to the back. The haptic vest contains 80 voice-coil type vibrators which are located at each of the two discrimination thresholds on the back and can be driven independently. The tactile sensation of the fingertips is transferred to the back using the developed haptic vest in combination with a sensing glove that can detect the pressure distribution on the finger skin at up to 100 points. Different experiments were conducted to validate the performance of the proposed haptic vest and sensing gloves. The use of the haptic vest and the sensing glove enabled the user to perceive the shape of a planar object more accurately when compared to the case where the user wore only the glove.