The /spl mu/-haptic: an inclusive haptic interface

The present paper describes a new type of inclusive haptic display based on a multi-stage rendering concept. The concept basic idea is to share several kinds of haptic actuation technologies for both tactile and kinesthetic information on three superposed stages display representing low-to-high frequency human perception bandwidth. The end-version of this work is to achieve a notebook size inclusive haptic device capable to render all haptic modalities in one and single device. This paper focuses on the design of the lower stage, i.e. the kinesthetic stage dealing with the low frequency components. First, the multi-stage concept is presented and discussed. Then, we introduce the mechanical design and the dynamic model serving for real-time control and force feedback, the design optimisation and the amelioration schemes are given. The controlling scheme and the force control issues are also presented.