Experiments and assessments of a 3-DOF haptic device for interactive operation

Haptic devices have been applied in interactive operation to perform contact tasks. To explore the haptic perception characteristics of typical push-pull and rotation operation, an experimental system was built by incorporating a three degrees of freedom (3-DOF) haptic device and the virtual environment. In this system, the haptic device is used to provide motion commands to control the avatar in the virtual environment and to exert haptic feedback on the human operator generated by three motors. In order to evaluate the main influential factors of interactive system based on haptic devices, ergonomic assessments are designed and experimentally implemented. Preliminary studies on the factors including restoring force, guidance force, speed of the virtual avatar, and the arm length have been conducted. The results are of great significance for the design of a haptic device and haptic interaction system by analyzing the specific requirements of ergonomics.