Collaborative Research: HCC: Medium: TouchBots for Surface Haptics

合作研究：HCC：媒介：用于表面触觉的 TouchBot

• 批准号: 2106866
• 负责人: Mary Hipwell
• 金额: $ 40万
• 依托单位: Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2021-10-01 至 2024-09-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2106866&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; HCC; Medium; TouchBots

This project will lead to a new class human-machine interfaces that provide tactile feedback to fingertips. Fingertips are remarkable multimodal sensors capable of detecting pressure and vibration, local defor-mation such as braille cells, hardness/softness, warmth/coolness, and endless types of textures. There are strong reasons to exploit these sensory capabilities in interfaces: making touch screens more accessi-ble for the vision impaired, making it easier to use touch interfaces in automobiles, providing touch feedback in augmented and virtual reality, and supporting remote touch in social, medical and retail applications. The wealth of commercially important use cases has led to a fast-growing market for touch feedback (“haptic”) technologies, yet none of the existing approaches engages more than a small fraction of the fingertips’ capabilities. The new interfaces to be developed – TouchBots – will provide a greatly expanded suite of haptic feedback modalities. A TouchBot is a miniaturized module that is placed be-tween a fingertip and a touch surface, such as a touchscreen or trackpad. It includes two main subsys-tems, one that guides the finger along a programmable path, and another that provides a sense of the shape and texture of objects along that path. Together, these subsystems will enable TouchBots to offer many new haptic interactions such as touch-typing interfaces without keyboards, realistic surface tex-tures for virtual reality, and fully programmable braille and tactile graphics anywhere there is a touch surface. These interactions have the potential to make touch screen devices accessible to the vision im-paired. Recognizing that a new generation of technological innovators will be needed to commercialize the fruits of this research, close ties will be forged to graduate-level curricula in innovation, leading to impact-minded individuals who are well-positioned to provide leadership in the growing haptics indus-try.The capabilities of a TouchBot stem from the manner in which it interacts with the underlying surface. The proposed TouchBot design include: (a) kinesthetic subsystem that provides feedback via passively rolling, but actively steered, wheels; (b) a cutaneous module that provides feedback via an array of tiny "pucks"; (c) selective brake mechanism for each of these pucks using electroadhesion. This approach, known as “cobotic,” has been thoroughly developed for macro-scale devices, and will be adapted here to the meso-scale by careful integration of steering actuation, wheel design, and intent sensing. Touch-bot will be extremely compact, with a low-power, and high-performance system for motion guidance. The ability of the TouchBot to provide local shape and texture will be provided by an array of tiny “pucks,” using the selective breaking mechanism. This research will leverage prior efforts in areas as diverse as surface haptics, wall-climbing robots and data storage read-write heads to realize an electro-adhesive device that is high-force and high-bandwidth and that can be used to control a high-density tactile array. By bringing these technologies together into fingertip-scale devices, it will be possible to demonstrate a wide range of surface haptic interactions including buttons, toggles, raised line drawings, braille characters, tactile graphics, and textures. Participatory design methods will be used to identify potential uses of TouchBot in the areas such as automotive and user interaction design. Experience proto-type and rapid iteration will be used to create stimuli that evoke rich feedback.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

该项目将带来新型人机界面，为指尖提供触觉反馈。指尖是卓越的多模态传感器，能够检测压力和振动、盲文单元等局部变形、硬度/柔软度、温暖/凉爽以及无穷无尽的感觉。在界面中利用这些感官功能有充分的理由：让视力受损的人更容易使用触摸屏，更容易在汽车中使用触摸界面，在汽车中提供触摸反馈。增强现实和虚拟现实，以及在社交、医疗和零售应用中支持远程触摸大量的商业重要用例导致了触摸反馈（“触觉”）技术市场的快速增长，但现有的方法没有一种能够吸引更多人。即将开发的新界面 TouchBot 将提供一系列大大扩展的触觉反馈模式 TouchBot 是放置在指尖和触摸之间的小型化模块。它包括两个主要子系统，一个沿着可编程路径引导手指，另一个提供沿着该路径的物体形状和纹理的感觉，这些子系统将共同实现。 TouchBot 提供许多新的触觉交互，例如无需键盘的触摸打字界面、虚拟现实的真实表面纹理以及在任何有触摸表面的地方完全可编程的盲文和触觉图形。认识到需要新一代技术创新者将这项研究成果商业化，我们将与研究生水平的创新课程建立密切联系，从而产生影响。有思想的人能够在不断发展的触觉行业中发挥领导作用。 TouchBot 的功能源于它与底层表面交互的方式。拟议的 TouchBot 设计包括：(a)通过被动滚动但主动转向的轮子提供反馈的动觉子系统；（b）通过一系列微小“圆盘”提供反馈的皮肤模块；（c）使用电粘附为每个圆盘提供选择性制动机制。被称为“协作机器人”的机器人已经针对宏观设备进行了彻底开发，并将通过仔细集成转向驱动、车轮设计和意图感应来适应中观尺度。用于运动引导的低功耗高性能系统。 TouchBot 提供局部形状和纹理的能力将由一系列微小的“圆盘”提供，使用选择性破坏机制。这项研究将利用先前在这些领域的努力。表面触觉、爬墙机器人和数据存储读写头等多种技术，可实现高力、高带宽的电粘附设备，可用于控制高密度触觉阵列。这些技术结合到指尖大小的设备中，将有可能展示各种表面触觉交互，包括按钮、切换开关、凸起线条图、盲文字符、触觉图形和纹理，将使用参与式设计方法来识别潜在用途。 TouchBot 在汽车和用户交互设计等领域的体验原型和快速迭代将用于创建激发丰富反馈的刺激。该奖项是 NSF 的法定使命，并通过使用评估被认为值得支持。基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准。