Tactile Skin Deformation Feedback for Conveying Environment Forces in Teleoperation

Teleoperated robots are used in a variety of applications. The immersive nature of the teleoperated experience is often limited by a lack of haptic information. However, in many applications there are difficulties conveying force information due to limitations in hardware fidelity and the inherent tradeoffs between stability and transparency. In situations where force feedback is limited, it is possible to use sensory substitution methods to convey this force information via other sensory modalities. We hypothesize that skin stretch feedback is a useful substitute for kinesthetic force feedback in force-sensitive teleoperated tasks. We created and tested a tactile device that emulates the natural skin deformation present during tool mediated manual interaction. With this device, experiment participants performed teleoperated palpation to determine the orientation of a stiff region in a surrounding artificial tissue using skin stretch, force, reduced gain force, graphic, or vibration feedback. Participants using skin stretch feedback were able to determine the orientation of the region as accurately as when using force feedback and significantly better than when using vibration feedback, but also exhibited higher interaction forces. Thus, skin stretch feedback may be useful in scenarios where force feedback is reduced or infeasible.