Contactless Haptic Display Through Magnetic Field Control

TL;DR

This paper introduces a contactless haptic display system that uses magnetic fields and electromagnets to enable natural, untethered touch perception in virtual environments, overcoming traditional mechanical constraints.

Contribution

It presents a novel magnetic field control method for an untethered, non-contact haptic interface using cascaded electromagnets and real-time force calculation.

Findings

Successful virtual object recognition and surface identification

Effective user perception of haptic feedback in experiments

Demonstrated untethered, contactless haptic interaction

Abstract

Haptic rendering enables people to touch, perceive, and manipulate virtual objects in a virtual environment. Using six cascaded identical hollow disk electromagnets and a small permanent magnet attached to an operator's finger, this paper proposes and develops an untethered haptic interface through magnetic field control. The concentric hole inside the six cascaded electromagnets provides the workspace, where the 3D position of the permanent magnet is tracked with a Microsoft Kinect sensor. The driving currents of six cascaded electromagnets are calculated in real-time for generating the desired magnetic force. Offline data from an FEA (finite element analysis) based simulation, determines the relationship between the magnetic force, the driving currents, and the position of the permanent magnet. A set of experiments including the virtual object recognition experiment, the virtual surface identification experiment, and the user perception evaluation experiment were conducted to demonstrate the proposed system, where Microsoft HoloLens holographic glasses are used for visual rendering. The proposed magnetic haptic display leads to an untethered and non-contact interface for natural haptic rendering applications, which overcomes the constraints of mechanical linkages in tool-based traditional haptic devices.