Tacsac: a wearable haptic device with capacitive touch-sensing capability for tactile display

Ozioko, O, Navaraj, W ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4753-2015, Hersh, M and Dahiya, R, 2020. Tacsac: a wearable haptic device with capacitive touch-sensing capability for tactile display. Sensors, 20 (17): 4780. ISSN 1424-8220

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Abstract

This paper presents a dual-function wearable device (Tacsac) with capacitive tactile sensing and integrated tactile feedback capability to enable communication among deafblind people. Tacsac has a skin contactor which enhances localized vibrotactile stimulation of the skin as a means of feedback to the user. It comprises two main modules—the touch-sensing module and the vibrotactile module; both stacked and integrated as a single device. The vibrotactile module is an electromagnetic actuator that employs a flexible coil and a permanent magnet assembled in soft poly (dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS), while the touch-sensing module is a planar capacitive metal-insulator-metal (MIM) structure. The flexible coil was fabricated on a 50 µm polyimide (PI) sheet using Lithographie Galvanoformung Abformung (LIGA) micromoulding technique. The Tacsac device has been tested for independent sensing and actuation as well as dual sensing-actuation mode. The measured vibration profiles of the actuator showed a synchronous response to external stimulus for a wide range of frequencies (10 Hz to 200 Hz) within the perceivable tactile frequency thresholds of the human hand. The resonance vibration frequency of the actuator is in the range of 60–70 Hz with an observed maximum off-plane displacement of 0.377 mm at coil current of 180 mA. The capacitive touch-sensitive layer was able to respond to touch with minimal noise both when actuator vibration is ON and OFF. A mobile application was also developed to demonstrate the application of Tacsac for communication between deafblind person wearing the device and a mobile phone user who is not deafblind. This advances existing tactile displays by providing efficient two-way communication through the use of a single device for both localized haptic feedback and touch-sensing.

Item Type:	Journal article
Publication Title:	Sensors
Creators:	Ozioko, O., Navaraj, W., Hersh, M. and Dahiya, R.
Publisher:	MDPI
Date:	24 August 2020
Volume:	20
Number:	17
ISSN:	1424-8220
Identifiers:	Number Type 10.3390/s20174780 DOI 1369058 Other
Rights:	© 2020 by the authors. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Divisions:	Schools > School of Science and Technology
Record created by:	Linda Sullivan
Date Added:	23 Sep 2020 14:34
Last Modified:	31 May 2021 15:14
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/40899

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