Design and Evaluation of a Wearable Fingertip Device for Three-Dimensional Skin-Slip Display

Skin-slip provides crucial cues about the interaction state and surface properties. Currently, most skin-slip devices focus on two-dimensional tactile slip display and have limitations when displaying surface properties like bumps and contours. In this article, a wearable fingertip device with a simple, effective, and low-cost design for three-dimensional skin-slip display is proposed. Continuous multi-directional skin-slip and normal indentation are combined to convey the sensation of three-dimensional geometric properties in virtual reality during active finger exploration. The device has a tactile belt, a five-bar mechanism, and four motors. Cooperating with the angle-mapping strategy, two micro DC motors are used to transmit continuous multi-directional skin-slip. Two servo motors are used to drive the five-bar mechanism to provide normal indentation. The characteristics of the device were obtained through the bench tests. Three experiments were designed and sequentially conducted to evaluate the performance of the device in three-dimensional surface exploration. The experimental results suggested that this device could effectively transmit continuous multi-directional skin-slip sensations, convey different bumps, and display surface contours.