Haptic Interface for Displaying Softness at Multiple Fingers: Combining a Side-Faced-Type Multifingered Haptic Interface Robot and Improved Softness-Display Devices

We describe the development of a haptic interface that can present the sensation of softness to multiple fingers. Human hands experience the sensation of softness when touching a yielding object like a human body. In virtual training systems for medical procedures such as palpation, how to display softness at multiple fingertips is an essential and demanding problem. To solve it, we develop a softness-display device using a flexible sheet and realize a haptic interface able to present softness sensations at multiple fingers. The haptic interface combines the newly developed device and our previously developed multifingered haptic interface robot, which consists of a five-fingered hand and an arm. We then carry out several experiments and demonstrate the validity of the developed haptic interface.