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Evaluation of Binaural Renderers: A Methodology
Published in AES Convention 143, 1900
Recent developments in immersive audio technology have motivated a proliferation of binaural renderers used for creating spatial audio content. Binaural renderers leverage psychoacoustic features of human hearing to reproduce a 3D sound image over headphones. In this paper a methodology for the comparative evaluation of different binaural renderers is presented. The methodological approach is threefold. A subjective evaluation of 1) quantitative characteristics (such as front/back and up/down discrimination, localization); 2) qualitative characteristics (such as timbre, naturalness); and 3) overall preference. The main objective of the methodology is to help to elucidate the most meaningful factors for the performance of binaural renderers and to provide indications on possible improvements in the rendering process.
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Evaluation of Binaural Renderers: Externalization
Published in AES Convention 144, 1900
Binaural renderers can be used to reproduce dynamic spatial audio over headphones and deliver immersive audio content. Six commercially available binaural renderers with different rendering methodologies were evaluated in a multi-phase subjective study. This paper presents and discusses the testing methodology, evaluation criteria, and main findings of the externalization, front/back discrimination and up/down discrimination tasks that are part of the first phase. Statistical analysis over a large number of subjects revealed that the choice of renderer has a significant effect on all three dependent measures. Further, ratings of perceived externalization for the renderers were found to be content-specific, while renderer reversal rates were much more robust to different stimuli.
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Evaluation of Binaural Renderers: Localization
Published in AES Convention 144, 1900
Binaural renderers can be used to reproduce spatial audio over headphones. A number of different renderers have recently become commercially available for use in creating immersive audio content. High-quality spatial audio can be used to significantly enhance experiences in a number of different media applications, such as virtual, mixed and augmented reality, computer games, and music and movie. A large multi-phase experiment evaluating six commercial binaural renderers was performed. This paper presents the methodology, evaluation criteria, and main findings of the horizontal-plane source localization experiment carried out with these renderers. Significant differences between renderers’ regional localization accuracy were found. Consistent with previous research, subjects tended to localize better in the front and back of the head than at the sides. Differences between renderer performance at the side regions heavily contributed to their overall regional localization accuracy.
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Evaluation of Binaural Renderers: Multidimensional Sound Quality Assessment
Published in AES International Conference on Audio for Virtual and Augmented Reality, 1900
A multi-phase subjective experiment evaluating six commercially available binaural audio renderers was carried out. This paper presents the methodology, evaluation criteria, and main findings of the tests that assessed perceived sound quality of the renderers. Subjects appraised a number of specific sound quality attributes—timbral balance, clarity, naturalness, spaciousness, and dialogue intelligibility—and ranked, in terms of preference, the renderers for a set of music and movie stimuli presented over headphones. Results indicated that differences between the perceived quality and preference for a renderer are discernible. Binaural renderer performance was also found to be highly content-dependent, with significant interactions between renderers and individual stimuli being found, making it difficult to determine an “optimal” renderer for all settings.
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Acoustic Perturbations in HRTFs Measured on Mixed Reality Headsets
Published in AES International Conference on Audio for Virtual and Augmented Reality, 1900
Materials that obstruct the path of acoustic waveforms in free-field to the human ear, may introduce distortions that can modify the natural Head-Related Transfer Functions. In this paper the effect of wearing commercially available Head-Mounted Displays for Mixed and Augmented Reality has been measured via a dummy head mannequin. Such spectral distortions may be relevant for mixed reality environments where real and virtual sounds mix together in the same auditory scene. The analysis revealed that the measured HMDs affected the fine structure of the HRTF (> 3–6 kHz) and also introduced non-negligible distortions in the interaural level difference range mostly at the contralateral ear. Distortion patterns in HRTFs and cue modi?cations are reported and discussed across incidence angles and frequency bands.
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Cutaneous Wave Propagation Shapes Tactile Motion: Evidence from Air-Coupled Ultrasound
Published in IEEE World Haptics Conference, 1900
Tactile stimulation of the skin excites cutaneous waves that travel tens of centimeters, but the implications for haptic engineering and perception are not well understood. We present evidence from optical vibrometry that tactile motion cues delivered via air-coupled ultrasound excite complex spatiotemporal wave fields in the hand. We distinguished two physical regimes based on the ratio of the motion speed to the cutaneous wave speed. At low speeds (1-4 m/s), waves generated by a moving stimulus propagated to similar distances in all directions. At high speeds (4-15 m/s), waves in the direction of motion were compressed. We also studied tactile motion perception at these speeds, which were faster than those used in prior studies. Motion sensitivity was impaired when waves were inhibited in front of the moving stimulus. This occurred for motion at high speeds and across disconnected skin areas. Together, our findings suggest that tactile motion perception is aided by waves propagating in the skin. This paper presents the first time-resolved observations of cutaneous responses to focused ultrasound, and contributes practical knowledge for the use of tactile motion and mid-air haptic feedback.
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Interpersonal Vibrotactile Feedback via Waves Transmitted through the Skin: Mechanics and Perception
Published in IEEE Haptics Symposium, 1900
Interpersonal touch is critical for health, development, and social relationships. An emerging opportunity in haptics is to design methods for augmenting interpersonal touch. Recently, we presented an actuated smart bracelet for transmitting vibrations through the hand of one person, as feedback to the hand of a second person, during a social interaction such as a handshake. Here, we present an investigation of human factors of vibrotactile feedback provided between people. In two experiments, we studied mechanical transmission of vibrations through a first person (the transmitter) and the perception of these vibrations by a second person (the receiver) who is touching the transmitter’s hand. We found that a receiver could readily perceive vibrotactile feedback when touching different locations on the transmitter’s hand. The magnitude of the transmitter’s skin acceleration was highly correlated with intensity the receiver perceived (Pearson’s R = 0.737). We found both perception and mechanics to depend on the driving signal characteristics and the direction in which the transmitter’s skin was actuated (at the wrist) to produce the vibrations. Low-frequency vibrations (50 and 100 Hz) were more readily perceived than higher frequencies (200 Hz). Vibrations produced by normal-direction actuation elicited perceptual responses that were less variable than those produced by tangential actuation. In addition, vibrations produced by tangential actuation at the wrist were felt to be very strong when a receiver touches the palm or base of the transmitter’s hand, but were felt to be weaker near the transmitter’s fingers. This study elucidates human factors for vibrotactile feedback between two people, and holds implications for the design of haptic technologies for the augmentation of interpersonal touch.
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Elastowave: Localized Tactile Feedback in a Soft Haptic Interface via Focused Elastic Waves
Published in IEEE Haptics Symposium, 1900
It is challenging to engineer programmable tactile displays to match human haptic abilities. Such displays are often composed of elements whose stiffness contrasts greatly with the softness of many natural materials. Emerging soft material technologies hold promise for their ability to conform to many objects, including the human body. However, rendering localized feedback from soft haptic devices remains challenging. Here, we present the Elastowave, a soft tactile interface that provides localized tactile feedback via a soft, compliant surface. We achieve this by focusing elastic wave fields generated by a compact array of remotely-positioned actuators. Our method is based on new variations of time-reversal focusing techniques for elastodynamic waves. Our system can provide dynamic, single- or multi-point localized tactile feedback with centimeter-scale resolution across a deformable interface with an area of 175 cm2 . The sizeable displacements of the focused tactile signals enable them to be easily felt, as our experiments show. This work could enable the design of a multitude of new soft tactile interfaces in areas such as creative computing, product design, and augmented reality.
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Tactile Echoes: Multisensory Augmented Reality for the Hand
Published in IEEE Transactions on Haptics, 1900
Touch interactions are central to many human activities, but there are few technologies for computationally augmenting free-hand interactions with real environments. Here, we describe Tactile Echoes, a finger-wearable system for augmenting touch interactions with physical objects. This system captures and processes touch-elicited vibrations in real-time in order to enliven tactile experiences. In this article, we process these signals via a parametric signal processing network in order to generate responsive tactile and auditory feedback. Just as acoustic echoes are produced through the delayed replication and modification of sounds, so are Tactile Echoes produced through transformations of vibrotactile inputs in the skin. The echoes also reflect the contact interactions and touched objects involved. A transient tap produces discrete echoes, while a continuous slide yields sustained feedback. We also demonstrate computational and spatial tracking methods that allow these effects to be selectively assigned to different objects or actions. A large variety of distinct multisensory effects can be designed via ten processing parameters. We investigated how Tactile Echoes are perceived in several perceptual experiments using multidimensional scaling methods. This allowed us to deduce low-dimensional, semantically grounded perceptual descriptions. We present several virtual and augmented reality applications of Tactile Echoes. In a user study, we found that these effects made interactions more responsive and engaging. Our findings show how to endow a large variety of touch interactions with expressive multisensory effects.
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A Smart Bracelet Supporting Tactile Communication and Interaction
Published in IEEE Haptics Symposium, 1900
The sense of touch can convey semantic and emotional information in social or computer-mediated interactions. Touch plays an essential role in communication with individuals affected by multiple sensory loss, many of whom use modes of touch communication that can be broadly described as tactile sign languages. Few technologies exist today to support such interactions. Here, we present a smart bracelet for facilitating tactile communication and interaction. The smart bracelet captures and analyzes vibrations that are elicited in the skin via touch gestures performed on the hand. We demonstrate the utility of this system for supporting communication via the Deafblind Manual alphabet, which is a tactile sign language. This smart bracelet can classify signed letters with greater than 90 % per-letter accuracy. These results show how existing modes of tactile communication can be integrated with information technologies. This work may furnish new paradigms for human-computer interaction via self- and interpersonal-touch contact.
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Ferrofluid Electromagnetic Actuators for High-Fidelity Haptic Feedback
Published in Sensors and Actuators A: Physical, 1900
Engineering high-fidelity haptic actuators is challenging due to the impressive tactile sensing characteristics of human skin, which possesses a wide frequency bandwidth, high spatial and temporal resolution, and large dynamic range. These attributes cannot be matched by existing haptic feedback technologies. Efficient, compact electromagnetic haptic actuators are needed in many emerging haptic systems, but their bandwidth and dynamic range are fundamentally constrained by heat transfer effects that become extremely limiting as device dimensions are decreased. Here, we present a compact actuator for delivering high-fidelity haptic feedback via an electromagnetic assembly comprising a magnetically-driven fabric-reinforced elastic membrane coupled to a ferrofluid encapsulated magnetic circuit. Using theoretical modeling, simulations, and experiments, we show how the mechanical design, magnetic circuit, and thermal design of this fingertip-sized actuator enable it to deliver sustained forces or indentations, wide-bandwidth vibrations, sustained forces of 3 Newtons, transient forces exceeding 13 Newtons. These actuators can be leveraged to supply many emerging systems and products with high fidelity haptic feedback.
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Shear Shock Waves Mediate Haptic Holography via Focused Ultrasound
Published in Science Advances, 1900
Emerging holographic haptic interfaces focus ultrasound in air to enable their users to touch, feel, and manipulate three-dimensional virtual objects. However, current holographic haptic systems furnish tactile sensations that are diffuse and faint, with apparent spatial resolutions that are far coarser than would be theoretically predicted from acoustic focusing. Here, we show how the effective spatial resolution and dynamic range of holographic haptic displays are determined by ultrasound-driven elastic wave transport in soft tissues. Using time-resolved optical imaging and numerical simulations, we show that ultrasound-based holographic displays excite shear shock wave patterns in the skin. The spatial dimensions of these wave patterns can exceed nominal focal dimensions by more than an order of magnitude. Analyses of data from behavioral and vibrometry experiments indicate that shock formation diminishes perceptual acuity. For holographic haptic displays to attain their potential, techniques for circumventing shock wave artifacts, or for exploiting these phenomena, are needed.
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Dynamic Feedback in Wave-Mediated Surface Haptics: A Modular Platform
Published in IEEE World Haptics Conference, 1900
Emerging surface haptic technologies exploit wave physics to create software-programmable two-dimensional haptic displays. However, designing such systems is challenging due to the complex dependence of wave propagation on the system’s hardware arrangement, materials, and boundary conditions. We present a modular system for exploring design opportunities for wave-mediated haptic feedback via elastic surfaces. The system integrates an array of repositionable, custom electromagnetic actuators that excite shear waves which propagate in a reconfigurable elastic medium. We use optical vibrometry imaging to capture data that fully encode the transmission of waves in this system. We present methods that leverage the linearity of wave transport and the acquired data to efficiently implement and evaluate a variety of hardware configurations and software methods for displaying dynamic, spatially-resolved two-dimensional haptic feedback. These techniques can allow researchers to rapidly investigate methods for engineering software-programmable surface haptic displays based on wave excitation.
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Rendering Dynamic Source Motion in Surface Haptics via Wave Focusing
Published in IEEE Transactions on Haptics, 1900
Emerging surface haptic technologies can display localized haptic feedback anywhere on a touch surface by focusing mechanical waves generated via sparse arrays of actuators. However, rendering complex haptic scenes with such displays is challenging due to the infinite number of physical degrees of freedom intrinsic to such continuum mechanical systems. Here, we present computational focusing methods for rendering dynamic tactile sources. They can be applied to a variety of surface haptic devices and media, including those that exploit flexural waves in thin plates and solid waves in elastic media. We describe an efficient rendering technique based on time-reversal of waves emitted from a moving source, and motion path discretization. We combine these with intensity regularization methods that reduce focusing artifacts, improve power output, and increase dynamic range. We demonstrate the utility of this approach in experiments with a surface display that uses elastic wave focusing to render dynamic sources, achieving millimeter-scale resolution in experiments. Results of a behavioral experiment show that participants could readily feel and interpret rendered source motion, attaining 99% accuracy across a wide range of motion speeds.
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Interpersonal Transmission of Vibrotactile Feedback via Smart Bracelets: Mechanics and Perception
Published in IEEE Transactions on Haptics, 1900
The importance of interpersonal touch for social well-being is widely recognized, and haptic technology offers a promising avenue for augmenting these interactions. We presented smart bracelets that use vibrotactile feedback to augment social interactions, such as handshakes, by transmitting vibrations between two people. This work conducts mechanical and perceptual experiments to investigate key factors affecting the delivery of interpersonal vibrotactile feedback via bracelets. Our results show that low-frequency vibrations elicited through tangential actuation are efficiently transmitted from the wrist to the hand, with amplitude varying based on distance, frequency, and actuation direction. We also found that vibrations transmitted to different locations on the hand can be felt by a second person, with perceptual intensity correlated with oscillation magnitude at the touched location. Additionally, we demonstrate how wrist-interfaced devices can elicit spatial vibration patterns throughout the hand surface, which can be manipulated by the frequency and direction of actuation at the wrist. Our experiments provide important insights into the human factors associated with interpersonal vibrotactile feedback and have significant implications for the design of technologies that promote social well-being.
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SkinSource: A Data-Driven Toolbox for Predicting Touch-Elicited Vibrations in the Upper Limb
Published in IEEE Haptics Symposium, 1900
Vibrations transmitted throughout the hand and arm during touch contact play a central role in haptic science and engineering but are challenging to model or experimentally characterize. Here, we present SkinSource, a data-driven toolbox for predicting skin vibrations across the upper limb in response to user-specified input forces. The toolbox leverages impulse response measurements that encode the physics of vibration transmission across the hands and arms of four participants and provides software tools for analyzing the predicted skin responses. We show that the SkinSource predictions closely match experimental measurements and confirm the underlying assumption of linear vibration transmission in the skin. We also demonstrate through several usage examples how SkinSource can act as a versatile computational platform for haptic research applications, such as characterizing vibrotactile transmission in the skin, engineering haptic interfaces, and investigating touch perception.
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NURing: A Tendon-Driven Wearable Ring for On-Demand Kinesthetic Haptic Feedback
Published in IEEE World Haptics Conference, 1900
Generating salient and intuitively understood haptic feedback on the human finger through a non-intrusive wearable remains a challenge in haptic device development. Most existing solutions either restrict the hand and finger’s natural range of motion or impede sensory perception, quickly becoming intrusive during dexterous manipulation tasks. Here, we introduce NURing (Non-intrUsive Ring), a tendon-actuated haptic device that provides kinesthetic feedback by deflecting the finger. The NURing is easily donned and doffed, enabling on-demand kinesthetic feedback while leaving the hand and fingers free for dexterous tasks. We demonstrate that the device delivers perceptually salient feedback and evaluate its performance through a series of uniaxial motion guidance tasks. The lightweight NURing device, measuring approximately 220 g, can generate guidance cues at up to 1 Hz, enabling participants to identify target directions in under 3s with a 1.5° steady-state error, corresponding to a fingertip deviation of less than 11 mm. Additionally, it can guide users along complex, smooth trajectories with an average trajectory error of 7°. These findings highlight the effectiveness of fingertip deflection as a kinesthetic feedback modality, enabling precise guidance for real-world applications such as sightless touchscreen navigation, assistive technology, and both industrial and consumer augmented/virtual reality systems.
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Tactile Displays Driven by Projected Light
Published in Science Robotics, 1900
Tactile displays that lend tangible form to digital content could transform computing interactions. However, achieving the resolution, speed, and dynamic range needed for perceptual fidelity remains challenging. We present a dynamic tactile display that directly converts projected light into visible and tactile patterns via a photomechanical surface populated with millimeter-scale optotactile pixels. The pixels transduce incident light into mechanical displacements through photostimulated thermal gas expansion, yielding millimeter-scale displacements with response times of 2 to 100 milliseconds. The use of projected light for power transmission and addressing renders these displays highly scalable. We demonstrate optically driven displays with up to 1511 addressable pixels, several times more pixels than prior tactile displays attaining comparable performance. Perceptual studies confirm that these displays can reproduce diverse spatiotemporal tactile patterns with high fidelity. This research establishes a foundation for practical and versatile high-resolution tactile displays driven by light.
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3D Cal: An Open-Source Software Library for Depth Reconstruction on Vision-Based Tactile Sensors
Published in IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L), 1900
Tactile sensing plays a key role in enabling dexterous and reliable robotic manipulation, but realizing this capability requires substantial calibration to convert raw sensor readings into physically meaningful quantities. Despite its near-universal necessity, the calibration process remains ad hoc and labor-intensive. Here, we introduce 3D Cal, an open-source library that transforms a low-cost 3D printer into an automated probing device capable of generating large volumes of labeled training data for calibrating vision-based tactile sensors. 3D Cal also provides an end-to-end, user-friendly pipeline for training custom convolutional networks to produce high-quality depth reconstructions. Using 3D Cal, we systematically explore the relationship between training data volume and spatial reconstruction performance on two commercially available sensors, DIGIT and GelSight Mini, and derive practical, empirically-grounded guidelines for calibrating these sensors. Finally, we demonstrate depth reconstruction performance on the DIGIT and GelSight Mini comparable to state-of-the-art methods, achieving average reconstruction errors of 156 μm and 205 μm on unseen objects, respectively. By automating tactile sensor calibration, 3D Cal can accelerate tactile sensing research, simplify sensor deployment, and facilitate the integration of tactile sensing in robotic platforms.
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Dead Zone Bilateral Control for High Performance Robotic Teleoperation
Published in IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L), 1900
Autonomous robot policies are commonly trained using demonstration data acquired via robotic teleoperation, a process which can be time-intensive and physically demanding for human operators. Bilateral control can speed up robotic teleoperation by allowing the operator to feel the forces experienced by the remote manipulator, but it can also transmit undesirable forces, such as friction and damping, back to the operator. Here, we present dead zone bilateral control, an improvement to the conventional position-position bilateral control scheme that prevents the transmission of unwanted forces during free-space motion. We implement our controller on a custom 2-degree-of-freedom teleoperation device and show that it reduces the energy required for free-space motion by approximately 50%. During a user study in which 16 participants performed a peg rolling task, our controller reduced completion times by an average of 25% compared to the standard position-position bilateral controller. The results suggest that dead zone bilateral control can expedite the collection of teleoperated task demonstrations, allowing researchers to gather larger datasets for training autonomous robot policies.
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Biomechanical Filtering Supports Efficient Tactile Encoding in the Human Hand
Published in Journal of the Royal Society Interface, 1900
Touching an object elicits skin oscillations that are biomechanically transmitted throughout the hand, driving responses in thousands of tactile receptors, including numerous exquisitely sensitive Pacinian corpuscles (PCs). Accepted descriptions of PC functionality characterize their response properties as highly stereotyped, based on experimental data gathered when stimuli are applied near the receptor. However, during natural touch, spiking activity in the majority of PCs is evoked by transmitted skin oscillations that are modified by biomechanical filtering. This filtering mechanism, stemming from dispersive wave dynamics in the skin, bears some similarity to the pre-neuronal filtering of auditory signals by the basilar membrane, a mechanical process that is instrumental to perception. Thus, we sought to clarify how skin biomechanics might influence tactile information encoding in the periphery. We used vibrometry imaging and computational neural experiments to examine the influence of biomechanical filtering on neural activity in whole-hand PC populations. We observed complex, location- and frequency-dependent patterns of filtering that were shaped by tissue mechanics and hand morphology. This source of biomechanical modulation diversified PC population spiking activity and enhanced tactile information encoding efficiency. These findings indicate that biomechanics furnishes a pre-neuronal mechanism that facilitates efficient tactile encoding and processing.
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Toward Eyes-Free Interaction: Whole-Arm Guidance via Fingertip Deflection with the NURing
Published in IEEE Transactions on Haptics, 1900
Haptic feedback can convey spatial information without engaging vision or hearing, making it well suited for eyes-free and assistive applications. However, many haptic guidance systems rely on cues that require explicit cognitive interpretation, which can slow user responses and introduce ambiguity in the conveyed spatial information. To address this, we introduce fingertip deflection as a kinesthetic guidance cue via the NURing, a wearable tendon-driven device that delivers controlled fingertip deflections to guide whole-arm motion, designed to leave the fingerpad unobstructed for tactile exploration. Inspired by the instinctive response of toddlers guiding parents by the finger [1], deflection cues provide a mechanically direct and readily interpreted form of haptic guidance. Two user studies evaluated closed-loop guidance in horizontal (single-axis, Study 1) and horizontal-vertical (dual-axis, Study 2) task spaces. In singleaxis tasks, blindfolded participants reached a median endpoint error of 11.3mm in under 3 s on average, and tracked moving targets with 53.5mm mean error. In dual-axis tasks, participants accurately identified deflection cue directions, and successfully reached two-dimensional target poses with a median endpoint error of 12.6mm in under 7 s on average. Kinematic analysis revealed that participants responded rapidly (median 330 ms), with early trajectories biased within 25° toward the target heading, indicating that deflection cues provided early, actionable direction information. These results demonstrate that fingertip deflection via the NURing enables fast, readily interpreted kinesthetic guidance that produces a coordinated whole-arm response without obstructing tactile contact, supporting its potential for eyes-free interaction and assistive applications.
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Wave Focusing in Metamaterials: Tactile Displays Beyond the Diffraction Limit
Published in arXiv (preprint), 1900
We address the challenge of engineering distributed haptic displays capable of reproducing multiple localized, independently addressable vibrations – representing virtual tactile pixels – at arbitrary locations on a surface. Our technique is based on the focusing of mechanical waves in a flexural plate using a sparse set of actuators. At tactile frequencies, wave diffraction prevents the formation of localized virtual tactile pixels at spatial scales relevant for multi-digit touch interactions. We overcome this limitation by augmenting the plate with a lattice of mechanical resonators, forming a locally resonant metamaterial plate. Coupling between the plate’s dynamic modes and those of the resonators alters the dispersion relation governing wave transmission, introducing a slow-wave branch that enables focusing beyond the diffraction limit imposed by the unmodified plate. We use numerical simulations to engineer the dispersion relation of the metamaterial system for high-resolution focusing at tactile frequencies. We then fabricate a metamaterial tactile display and experimentally demonstrate virtual pixels that are far more localized than those generated on an otherwise identical plate without resonators, resulting in a tenfold reduction in virtual-pixel area. In behavioral experiments, we show that this system can deliver perceptually localized single- and multi-point tactile feedback and moving tactile sources while maintaining independent control over temporal waveforms at multiple display locations. The methods reported here can enable high-resolution haptic displays for widespread applications using a small number of actuated degrees of freedom.
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The Missing Touch: Spatially Distributed Tactile Feedback Brings Teleoperation Closer to Human Dexterity
Published in arXiv (preprint), 1900
A fundamental challenge in robotic teleoperation is enabling an operator to control a remote robot as effortlessly and intuitively as their own hands. Despite the growing use of teleoperation to collect demonstration data for training autonomous robot policies, teleoperated robot performance still falls significantly short of human dexterity, even for basic tasks. Here, we present evidence that a key factor contributing to this performance gap is the absence of spatially distributed tactile feedback. Using a two-degree-of-freedom (DoF) bilateral force-feedback telemanipulator paired with a 32-DoF tactile fingertip display, we show that operator performance improves significantly when localized deformations on the remote manipulator are faithfully reproduced on the operator’s fingertip. In a series of teleoperation tasks, reproducing distributed contact information not only accelerated task performance but also brought teleoperated movements closer to natural human behavior by minimizing corrective actions and task completion steps, thereby reducing the deviation between teleoperated and natural trajectories by 29–79%. Furthermore, we found that increasing the resolution of the tactile feedback—by refining how finely the measured displacements were quantized for reproduction—compressed the state-space distribution of teleoperated motions, which has been associated with improved training outcomes for autonomous robot policies. Together, these results suggest that spatially distributed tactile feedback is essential for closing the gap between human and teleoperated dexterity and training the next generation of autonomous robots.
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