Small and Lightweight Tactile Display(SaLT) and Its Application

Seung-Chan Kim*, Chong-Hui Kim**, Gi-Hun Yang, Tae-Heon Yang*, Byung-Kil Han*, Sung-Chul Kang, Dong-Soo Kwon*
* KAIST(Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology)
** ADD(Agency for Defense Development)
KIST(Korea Institute of Science and Technology)

ABSTRACT
This paper presents a small and lightweight tactile display system
and describes its capabilities with respect to spatial and temporal
tactile feedback. Each tactile display module is comprised of a
4x4 piezoelectric ultrasonic actuator array with a spatial resolution
of 1.5mm and a temporal resolution of 20Hz. The objective of this
research is to build a small and lightweight tactile display system
such that the system, including the display modules and complete
controller parts, will be wearable by a user. It was found that the
developed tactile display module can display both spatial and
temporal information with less power consumption.

KEYWORDS: tactile display, texture

INDEX TERMS: H.5.2 [User Interfaces]: Haptic I/O
1 INTRODUCTION
Tactile displaysdevices that provide dynamic tactile
information to a user, for instance, via a finger padare
becoming more widely used as modules for PC peripherals.
Numerous types of tactile displays have been developed using
piezoactuators, electro-active polymer actuators, ultrasonic motors,
shape memory wires, and so on. Fukuda et al. developed a tactile
display using an electromagnetic actuator[2]. Konyo and
Todokoro utilized composite polymers including an ionic
conducting polymer gel film (ICPF) for making a tactile
display[9]. Koo et al. used an electroactive polymer to develop a
wearable tactile display system[10]. An electrotactile display for
the fingertip was developed for providing complex tactile
sensation through electrocutaneous stimuli[7]. An electrotactile
display that selectively stimulates receptors from a surface
electrode was found to be small enough to be easily embedded
into other systems[17]. Tactile displays that use piezoelectric
bimorphs show high performance in their use of a broad temporal
bandwidth and sufficient blocking force. Each actuator gives a
normal deflection[4,13] and lateral skin stretching[16] in response
to electrically induced bending of a bimorph. Winfield et al.
developed a haptic display module that utilizes variation of
surface friction[18].


Both roughness and smoothness can be generated through the
haptic device, allowing the coefficient of friction to be varied with
high temporal and spatial frequency.
Recently, Iwamoto et al. utilized airborne ultrasound to develop
a non-contact tactile display. The device provides sufficient
bandwidth, around up to 1kHz[5]. Efforts to allow thermal
stimulation in existing tactile display systems[1,19] with the aim
of enhancing the perceived reality of sensation, have also been
reported.
Tactile modules can play an important role in the HCI field.
Kyung and Lee proposed an Interactive Digital Sketchbook
system that utilizes the existence of tactile feedback during
surface interactions[14]. Recently, Kim and Lee developed an
ambient information display for everyday products or
environments[8]. Ziat et al. proposed a haptic zoom system[20].
Because the haptic window on skin is very narrow, the concept of
haptic zoom during exploration can be a useful tool. Jones et al.
suggested tactile vocabulary concepts using an array of encased
electromechanical motors[6]. Exceptional performance of tactile
patterns was reported in the research. In this paper, we propose a
small and lightweight tactile display system for both spatial and
temporal tactile feedback.
2 SYSTEM
2.1 Actuator
In this research, a tactile display module that uses linear ultrasonic
actuators is proposed. TULA (Tiny Ultrasonic Linear Actuator), a
subminiature motor using a piezoelectric effect, was adopted for
the proposed system.

Principle of actuation
The linear actuator, TULA, is comprised of elastic material and a
piezoelectric ceramic material. The actuator generates linear
movement using the characteristics of piezoelectricity and inertia
with friction.

Actuator Specification
TULA was adopted for the tactile display module for tactile
feedback with less latency and to ensure lower power
consumption. Table I shows the specifications of the actuator.
TABLE I
ACTUATOR SPECIFICATION
Specification
Mechanical
Properties
Transducer Thickness(mm) <0.4
Diameter(mm) 4.0
Rod Thickness(mm) <20
Diameter(mm) 1.0
Speed mm/s <20
Thrust gf <20
Stroke mm 3~11
Electric
Properties
Driving voltage V 10-35
Driving
frequency
kHz 80~13
0
Power
Consumption
mW <300

Seung-Chan Kim, Tae-Heon Yang, Byung-kil Han is with HRI Center,
KAIST, Daejeon, Korea {kimsc, yangth, hanbk}@robot.kaist.ac.kr
Chong Hui Kim was with HRI Center, KAIST. He is now with the Agency for
Defense Development, Korea (e-mail: gio@kaist.ac.kr). Gi-Hun Yang was with
HRI Center, KAIST. He coworks with Sung-Chul Kang who is now with
Cognitive Robotics Research Center, Korean Institute of Science and
Technology, Seoul Korea (e-mail: {yanggh, kasch}@kist.re.kr).
Dong-Soo Kwon is with the Mechanical Engineering Department, KAIST,
Daejeon Korea. (Corresponding author to provide phone: +82-42-869-3042; fax:
+82-42-869-8240; e-mail: kwonds@ kaist.ac.kr).
Third Joint Eurohaptics Conference and Symposium on Haptic Interfaces
for Virtual Environment and Teleoperator Systems
Salt Lake City, UT, USA, March 18-20, 2009
978-1-4244-3858-7/09/$25.00 2009 IEEE 69
2.2 Tactile display
Due to the spatiotemporal perceptive characteristics and
biomechanical properties of human skin, the design of a tactile
display must consider physiological, psychophysical, and
biomechanical aspects. The following factors were considered in
the development of tactile display.

Continuous shape
Taking advantages of the poor ability of two-point discrimination,
tactile representation of a continuous shape is achievable. Usually,
however, 2mm interspaces between micro actuators presents a
challenge to a designer[1]. A structure with radial symmetry can
be utilized for a shorter inter-pin distance.

Normal indentation
A tactile display with symmetrical appearance results in a concave
contact surface whose curvature radius is optimal for finger
contact. As normal indentation is achievable throughout the
contact areas on the fingertip, tactile feelings such as perceived
roughness as well as perception of the surface shape can be
created. It was found that the contact surface was optimal for
conveying tactile stimuli with minimum structural complexity.

Wider tactile window
Mode of touch is very important in perceiving texture information
as texture information encoded both spatially and temporally[3] is
conveyed to the fingers of the user during explorative movements.
Human can use only a small field of view while scanning a
textured surface with their fingers due to the inherent
characteristics of touch through a finger. Furthermore, because it
is known that haptic perception on a 2D plane results in heavy
demands on working memory, a wider tactile window can have a
beneficial effect on tactile perception. A rectangular contact area
with an aspect ratio of 2:1 was designed after assigning two
tactors to each actuator in lateral directions. Figure 1 shows the
concept of the wide tactile window.

Figure 1. Rectangular contact area; tactile window
The rectangular contact area is effective, especially in lateral
explorative movements, i.e., movements of the fingers across a
surface, when the available number of actuators is set as a
constraint. Homma et al. also utilized similar geometrical
configurations[4].
Figure 2 shows a developed tactile display that satisfies the
aforementioned design considerations.

Assembled and cross section view


Figure 2. Exploded view

Multi-fingered tactile display
During exploratory procedures such as lateral motion, humans
recognize textures using several fingers[15]. There have been
many studies regarding the miniature tactile modules that have
been developed for interaction with a virtual and remote
environment [11]. A computer mouse system, VTPlayer by
Virtouch Ltd., is a good example. Each mouse system has two
implemented tactile pads to generate texture information. A multi-
fingered tactile display can improve the perception of reality as it
widens the tactile window. In the proposed system, three tactile
modules for the thumb, the index finger, and the middle finger
were developed.
Although numerous design considerations in terms of
performance of the tactile display have been discussed, a trade-off
between component size and performance should be considered
when designing a portable tactile display system. Although a wide
temporal bandwidth is required when generating various tactile
sensations, such a mechanical operation is difficult to achieve in a
portable system. However, because it was found that even low
frequency actuations (~20Hz) can generate useful tactile
sensations at sufficient amplitude, low frequency operation was
set as a design consideration.

Low frequency information
Recently, it was found that passive touch with low-frequency
vibration can be used as an alternative means of active touch,
which implies the movement of the finger actively over a
stationary surface during shape recognition. Low-frequency
actuations for normal indentation on the fingertip were also found
to be able to induce various types of texture sensations that
require spatiotemporal information[13]. From a mechanical point
of view, low-frequency movement has the advantages of low heat
dissipation and low power consumption, which are both important
criteria for a portable tactile display. Furthermore, it is possible to
generate a private form of tactile sensation as a byproduct of the
structural response of the interface, which is usually accompanied
by a vibrational tactile display, is not fully activated. Considering
that low-frequency bandwidth of a tactile stimuli can suitably
represent realistic shape and texture information, these
characteristics can be utilized as essential tactile information,
especially in a small-sized tactile display.

2.3 Electronics Architecture
Figure 3 shows the electronics driver that was developed to
control one tactile display module which has sixteen pairs of
actuators. Figure 4 shows a detailed block diagram of the
electronics driver. It consists of a FPGA to generate control
signals, two DC-DC converters to provide positive and negative
70
supply voltages to the piezoelectric actuators, and a MOSFET
array to drive the actuators according to the PWM control signals.


Figure 3. Electronics driver to control one tactile display module


Figure 4. Electronics driver to control one tactile display module

For a simple electronics design and easy control of the
piezoelectric actuator, PWM signals of two duty ratios were used.
The first of these was a 75% duty ratio for forward motion and the
second was a 25% duty ratio for backward motion. As a result,
each pin of the tactile display module is controlled by two control
bits: a direction bit to determine motion direction and an enable
bit to determine the activation of an actuator. The electronics
driver has an 8-bits parallel I/O interface with a microcontroller.
Table II shows a control register map of the electronics driver
developed in this work. Given that the proposed tactile system
consists of three tactile display modules, an nCS (Chip Select)
was used to control the corresponding tactile display module.

TABLE II
CONTROL REGISTER MAP
nCS A1 A0 Function
0 0 0 Direction register of lower 8 actuators
0 0 1 Direction register of higher 8 actuators
0 1 0 Enable register of lower 8 actuators
0 1 1 Enable register of higher 8 actuators
1 x x No operation

Figure 5 shows the overall electronics system used to drive three
tactile display modules for three fingers. For the representation of
the texture and shape information and for easy control of the
frequency, a graphic-to-tactile production method was developed.
Any type of raw image can be converted to tactile information
based on a gray scale technique. The image can be a multilayer
image, which can include amplitude and frequency information
independently. The host computer transmits this information to
the microcontroller of an electronics system via a Bluetooth
communication link. The microcontroller converts the received
data from a computer into PWM control signals to drive the
piezoelectric actuators. It then transmits this information to the
electronics drivers. The electronics drivers then generate a driving
power signal according to a PWM control signal and deliver
power to each tactile display module to represent tactile
information. To miniaturize the size of the electronics system, it
was designed using bus architecture.

RS232
Bluetooth Bluetooth
Microcontroller
(ATMEGA128)
Serial Comm.
Electronics
Driver 0
Data Bus
Address Bus
nCS0
nCS1
nCS2
Electronics
Driver 1
Electronics
Driver 2
Computer
Tactile
Display
Module 0
Tactile
Display
Module 1
Tactile
Display
Module 2

Figure 5. Electronics system used to drive three tactile display
modules

2.4 Developed Modules
Tactile display modules for three fingers were developed. Every
module has sixteen (= four rows and four columns) actuators. The
maximum displacement of a pin is greater than 500um with
approximately 20Hz of frequency bandwidth. To satisfy the
design specifications described in Section 2, the tactors, which
have a diameter of 0.5mm, were arranged at intervals of 1.5mm
along the radial direction. Figure 2 shows the developed tactile
display module electronics system. Every module can display
static (= 0 Hz), and dynamic (~ 20Hz) indentation through the
independent movement of the linear actuators. Two pins
(diameter=0.5mm) are attached to one ultrasonic linear actuator.
Sixteen (= 44) tactors provide normal indentations on the skin
independently. Each tactile module is independently controlled to
represent both spatial and temporal information.

3 EVALUATION
The main objective of the evaluation is to verify the capability
with respect to spatial and temporal tactile feedback.

3.1 Roughness representation test
This test aims at discovering how frequency information can be
generated by the developed system. Roughness is selected
because it is closely related temporal information.

Participants
The participants were 8 graduate students of KAIST. Their mean
age was 24.8 years (range 23 to 28). All of the participants
defined themselves as "right-handed" and reported no known
cutaneous or kinesthetic problems.

Method
Subjects were asked to respond by assigning sensitive strength
value adjectives on a seven-point Likert-scale-based questionnaire
that included the roughness sensation. The subjects placed their
71
index finger on the tactile display unit gently and passively while
wearing headphones (Sony MDR-V700) through which they
heard pink noise that could block unwanted byproduct sounds
from the structural response. Before starting the experiment, all
subjects were instructed until they were accustomed to the
adjective rough using sand paper with different appropriate grit
sizes.

Stimuli
Five frequencies (1, 2, 5, 10, and 20Hz) with 200um of amplitude
were adopted as a stimuli set. All of these stimuli were generated
in a random order as they were conveyed to the subjects. As every
stimulus was conveyed four times, subjects were asked to respond
to 20 (=5x4) questions.

Results
Figure 8 shows the change in the sensitivity strength of each
sensations with respect to variations in the frequency. The error
bar is the standard deviation of the responses.


Figure 6. Responses to "perceived roughness"

The statistical results showed that the developed system was able
to represent surface roughness well (F=7.45 with p<0.01).
Although 20Hz is known that it is not sufficient to display
roughness, it is likely that increased perceived roughness can be
achievable when it is combined with relatively high amplitude.

3.2 Static shape representation test
Exploration tasks were performed during the test. For the motion
input, 'SaLT Mouse' system described in Section 5.2 was utilized.

Participants
Participants were 6 researchers in KIST. Their mean age was 26.5
years (range 25 to 29). All conditions are identical to those of first
group.

Stimuli and Method
Subjects were asked to distinguish spatially distributed
information. Static tactile information is conveyed to subjects
according to the current position on the screen. Figure 8 shows
planar shape patterns used for shape comparison test. During the
test, visual information is not provided.

Figure 7. Shape with different width

Results
Table III shows percentages of correct responses of the evaluation.

TABLE III
EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
1 2 3 4 5 6
1 93.8% 4.2% 2.1% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0%
2 0.0% 95.8% 4.2% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0%
3 2.1% 8.3% 89.6% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0%
4 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 95.8% 4.2% 0.0%
5 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 10.4% 85.4% 4.2%
6 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 2.1% 8.3% 89.6%

From the result, it is shown that planar shape can be represented
using the developed system. On the whole, subjects reported the
static actuation make real-like sensations. However, additional
test is required to explain whether the confusion (85.4%) is caused
from just psychophysical aspect.


4 APPLICATION
The application of a tactile module can be made by utilizing direct
tactile feedback. Tactile feedback is usually synchronized with
input modalities when the direct contact mode used. The proposed
tactile display modules were integrated into a haptic glove system
and mouse system developed by KIST.

4.1 Wearable tactile display
The haptic glove system by KIST can display force feedback to
the joints of the fingers. Tactile modules were attached to the tip
of thumb and to the tips of the first two fingers as well. The entire
controller system is thus wearable on the back of the user. The
developed tactile display system successfully conveyed texture
information such as ridges, grooves, and surface roughness
according to the position information acquired from the haptic
gloves. To handle the texture information, a graphic-to-tactile
conversion method[12] based on the gray scale level of the image
was adopted. Additionally, tactile impulses can be generated
through feedback with a low latency to prevent users from being
distracted from their focus on the current environment. As this
tactile device was developed with the design criteria described in
Section III, the operator could feel the virtual information well.
72
Figure 8 shows the entire integrated system along as it appears on
a user.

Controller
3 Tactile Display
Modules

Figure 8. The proposed tactile display modules.


4.2 Integration of commercial mouse and tactile display unit
To use developed tactile display system as a user-friendly
interface, we embedded the tactile display system to a
conventional mouse with additionally designed cover referring to
Kyung's previous work[13]. The developed tactile display system
is small enough to be embedded into a conventional mouse. The
mouse system is named as 'SaLT Mouse.' Outer shape of the
mouse is made by machining the plastic material so that it can
provide tactile display functions as well as conventional mouse
function that can be used as a normal mouse when a user interacts
with a computer.




Figure 9. The proposed mouse system and its application
5 CONCLUSION
Although pin array-based tactile displays are associated with
strong expressiveness of tactile feelings such as pulses, vibration,
and texture, it is difficult to embed these types of tactile display
modules into portable devices due to their intrinsic constraints.
This study attempted to overcome these problems by designing
efficient mechanical structures and an electronics architecture. In
the present research, a new tactile display module for multi-/
single-fingered interaction is proposed. The system provides
various types of tactile sensations, especially roughness and
planar textures, with less latency and little unwanted byproduct
sounds in the structural response. Especially, it seems that the
static planar shape is familiar with normal users and, therefore, it
can be useful when making real-like textures using a tactile
display.


ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
This research was supported by the 'SMEs Technology Innovation
Program' and 'Development of Immersive Tangible Experience
Space Technology (KIST).'

REFERENCES

[1] M. Benali-Khoudja, M. Hafez, J.M. Alexandre, A.
Kheddar, V. Moreau, VITAL: A vibrotactile interface
with thermal feedback, 2004.
[2] T. Fukuda, H. Morita, F. Arai, H. Ishihara, H. Matsuura,
Micro resonator using electromagnetic actuator for
tactile display, 1997, pp. 143-148.
[3] E. Gamzu, E. Ahissar, Importance of Temporal Cues for
Tactile Spatial-Frequency Discrimination, Journal of
Neuroscience 21 (18) (2001) 7416.
[4] T. Homma, S. Ino, H. Kuroki, T. Izumi, T. Ifukube,
Development of a piezoelectric actuator for presentation
of various tactile stimulation patterns to fingerpad skin,
Vol. 2, 2004.
[5] T. Iwamoto, M. Tatezono, T. Hoshi, H. Shinoda,
Airborne ultrasound tactile display, ACM New York,
NY, USA, 2008.
[6] L.A. Jones, J. Kunkel, E. Torres, Tactile Vocabulary for
Tactile Displays, 2007, pp. 574-575.
[7] H. Kajimoto, N. Kawakami, T. Maeda, S. Tachi,
Electro-tactile display with force feedback, Vol. 11,
2001, pp. 95-99.
[8] H. Kim, W. Lee, Shade Pixel, ACM New York, NY,
USA, 2008.
[9] M. Konyo, S. Todokoro, Artificial Tactile Feel Display
Using EAP Actuator, Worldwide ElectroActive
Polymers, Artificial Muscles, Newsletter 2 (1) (2000).
[10] I. Koo, K. Jung, J. Koo, J. Nam, Y. Lee, H.R. Choi,
Wearable tactile display based on soft actuator, 2006, pp.
2220-2225.
[11] A. Kron, G. Schmidt, Multi-fingered tactile feedback
from virtual and remote environments, 2003, pp. 16-23.
73
[12] D. Kwon, S. Kim, Haptic Interfaces for Mobile Devices:
A Survey of the State of the Art, Recent Patents on
Computer Science 1(2) (2008) pp. 84-82.
[13] K. Kyung, S. Kim, D. Kwon, Texture Display Mouse:
Vibrotactile Pattern and Roughness Display,
Mechatronics, IEEE/ASME Transactions on 12 (3)
(2007) 356-360.
[14] K. Kyung, J. Lee, wUbi-Pen: windows graphical user
interface interacting with haptic feedback stylus, ACM
New York, NY, USA, 2008.
[15] S.J. Lederman, R.L. Klatzky, Hand movements: a
window into haptic object recognition, Cognitive
psychology(Print) 19 (3) (1987) 342-368.
[16] J. Pasquero, V. Hayward, STReSS: A Practical Tactile
Display System with One Millimeter Spatial Resolution
and 700 Hz Refresh Rate, Vol. 2003, 2003, pp. 94-110.
[17] K. Sato, K. Minamizawa, N. Kawakami, S. Tachi,
Haptic telexistence, ACM Press New York, NY, USA,
2007.
[18] L. Winfield, J. Glassmire, J.E. Colgate, M. Peshkin, T-
PaD: Tactile Pattern Display through Variable Friction
Reduction, IEEE Computer Society Washington, DC,
USA, 2007, pp. 421-426.
[19] G. Yang, L.A. Jones, D. Kwon, Use of Simulated
Thermal Cues for Material Discrimination and
Identification with a Multi-Fingered Display,
PRESENCE: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments
17 (1) (2008) 29-42.
[20] M. Ziat, O. Gapenne, J. Stewart, C. Lenay, J. Bausse,
Design of a Haptic Zoom: levels and steps, IEEE
Computer Society Washington, DC, USA, 2007, pp.
102-108.


74