Haptic Background research

7/12/11
Gloves proposed/Built by researchers:

A data-glove with vibro-tactile stimulation for virtual social interaction and rehabilitation

• Serve as a data gloves that measures the angles of the fingers' bending with vibration feed back
• Goniometric sensor
• No a libration needed for different finger length.
• built using chip components like plastic, steel cable, permanent magnet and hall effect sensor.
• translate the bending motion of dinger to a sliding motion of permanent magnet w.r.t Hall Effect sensor
• vibro-tactile Actuator
• Vibration alarm unit in handphone is used for lower cost
• Frequency adjustable to create stimulation to four different tactile unit in human skin

Wearable device that vibrates fingertip could improve one's sense of touch

• Done by Minoru Shinohara from Georgia Tech(http://www.ap.gatech.edu/Shino/index.php)
• a glove with vibrator at fingertip was built
• High frequency vibration at fingertip can improve tactile sensitivity (http://gtresearchnews.gatech.edu/sensory-glove/)

Available commercial applications
peregrine Game Glove

• It's more like a wearable programmable keyboard, able to trigger different key strokes based on the position of the touch
• Used in gaming for more convenient controlling

Essential Reality P5 Gaming gloves

• Able to sense 3D motions of fingers 

Vests
US Patent (US 7,967,679 B2)--Tactile Wearable Gaming Device

• Separate recording and playback unit
• Recording unit to be used when creating the Tactile library
• Playback unit to be worn by client when playing video games
• Gaming vest using arrays of pneumatic bladders
• claimed being able to provide feelings of:
• Impact-by inflate part of the arrays of badders
• Right/Left turn- by inflating the right/left of the vest
• Acceleration/deceleration-by inflating the back/front(I don't think this is possible, the counter force would come in, when you inflate the back, the front would be compressed due to counter force) 

Product by TNGames(tngames.com)

• 3RD Space Gaming Vest(us$139)
• Real world application to the patents above. Actually same bunch of people
• Able to simulate impact of
• knife
• piston
• machine gun
• bomb explosion 
• In action games (bio-shock, call of duty, etc)

06/12/11
Haptic technology
Early applications:

• On planes, to feedback on the pilots once the plane is steered beyond the critical angle, which is dangerous.
• On teleoperators, used to remove radioactive wastes and other dangerous operations.

Gaming application:
product by "Novint"

• Falcon
• a hand grip with force feed-backed by three controlling arms
• arms driven by motors with refresh rate of 1 KHz
• able to keep track of the position up to sub-millimeter resolution
• http://www.novint.com/index.php/novintfalcon
• Xio (coming soon)
• arm motion detector with force feedback
• http://www.novint.com/index.php/novintxio

Other gaming pad/joysticks using haptic technology

• Wii
• Rumble pak
• DualShock
• All vibration based