Free to touch: A portable tactile display for 3D surface texture exploration

The development of successful tactile displays can be assisted by the capacity to assess their performance in integrated Virtual Reality applications. The design of single tactor or desktop tactile displays has been useful for scientific analysis of the mechanisms of touch. Nevertheless, it does not provide useful information about the quality of immersion in VR environments integrated with tactile feedback where user mobility and comfort are paramount. The present work introduces a new wireless portable tactile display for the finger. This new device demonstrates excellent levels of force output combined with good bandwidth in a configuration of a wearable 4x4 array of vertically moving tactors. The focus of this design is small size, comfort, mobility and ultimately integration into a complete Virtual Reality system for tactile surface texture exploration with 6DOF in the finger's work envelope.