Development of Active Links for Physical Man-Machine Interaction

Abstract

We have been developing active links for physical man-machine interaction, targeting the presentation of 3D continuous surfaces. We developed an active tetrahedron and an active icosahedron. To design prototypes, we geometrically analyzed the active link to clarify restraints. The active tetrahedron consists of four new spherical joints and six pneumatic cylinders combined with a commercially available mechanical simulator to realize realtime man-machine interaction. The active icosahedron consists of 30 intelligent pneumatic cylinders and 12 spherical joints. The intelligent cylinder developed for the active icosahedron has a microoptical encoder. We applied the active icosahedron to virtual clay modeling, demonstrating its potential as a practical haptic interface.