Award Abstract # 2106191
Collaborative Research: HCC: Medium: TouchBots for Surface Haptics

NSF Org: IIS
Division of Information & Intelligent Systems
Recipient: NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY
Initial Amendment Date: July 9, 2021
Latest Amendment Date: July 9, 2021
Award Number: 2106191
Award Instrument: Standard Grant
Program Manager: Cindy Bethel
cbethel@nsf.gov
 (703)292-4420
IIS
 Division of Information & Intelligent Systems
CSE
 Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering
Start Date: October 1, 2021
End Date: September 30, 2025 (Estimated)
Total Intended Award Amount: $799,910.00
Total Awarded Amount to Date: $799,910.00
Funds Obligated to Date: FY 2021 = $799,910.00
History of Investigator:
  • James Colgate (Principal Investigator)
    colgate@northwestern.edu
Recipient Sponsored Research Office: Northwestern University
633 CLARK ST
EVANSTON
IL  US  60208-0001
(312)503-7955
Sponsor Congressional District: 09
Primary Place of Performance: Northwestern University
2145 Sheridan Road
Evanston
IL  US  60208-3118
Primary Place of Performance
Congressional District:
09
Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): EXZVPWZBLUE8
Parent UEI:
NSF Program(s): HCC-Human-Centered Computing
Primary Program Source: 01002122DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT
Program Reference Code(s): 7367, 7924
Program Element Code(s): 736700
Award Agency Code: 4900
Fund Agency Code: 4900
Assistance Listing Number(s): 47.070

ABSTRACT

This project will lead to a new class of human-machine interfaces that provide tactile feedback to fingertips. Fingertips are remarkable multimodal sensors capable of detecting pressure and vibration, local deformation such as braille cells, hardness/softness, warmth/coolness, and endless types of textures. There are strong reasons to exploit these sensory capabilities in interfaces: making touch screens more accessible for the vision impaired, making it easier to use touch interfaces in automobiles, providing touch feedback in augmented and virtual reality, and supporting remote touch in social, medical and retail applications. The wealth of commercially important use cases has led to a fast-growing market for touch feedback (?haptic?) technologies, yet none of the existing approaches engages more than a small fraction of the fingertips? capabilities. The new interfaces to be developed ? TouchBots ? will provide a greatly expanded suite of haptic feedback modalities. A TouchBot is a miniaturized module that is placed between a fingertip and a touch surface, such as a touchscreen or trackpad. It includes two main subsystems: one that guides the finger along a programmable path, and another that provides a sense of the shape and texture of objects along that path. Together, these subsystems will enable TouchBots to offer many new haptic interactions such as touch-typing interfaces without keyboards, realistic surface textures for virtual reality, and fully programmable braille and tactile graphics anywhere there is a touch surface. These interactions have the potential to make touch screen devices accessible to the vision impaired. Recognizing that a new generation of technological innovators will be needed to commercialize the fruits of this research, close ties will be forged to graduate-level curricula in innovation, leading to impact-minded individuals who are well-positioned to provide leadership in the growing haptics industry.

The capabilities of a TouchBot stem from the manner in which it interacts with the underlying surface. The proposed TouchBot design includes: (a) kinesthetic subsystem that provides feedback via passively rolling, but actively steered, wheels; (b) a cutaneous module that provides feedback via an array of tiny "pucks"; (c) selective brake mechanism for each of these pucks using electroadhesion. This approach, known as ?cobotic,? has been thoroughly developed for macro-scale devices, and will be adapted here to the meso-scale by careful integration of steering actuation, wheel design, and intent sensing. Touch-bot will be extremely compact, with a low-power, and high-performance system for motion guidance. The ability of the TouchBot to provide local shape and texture will be provided by an array of tiny ?pucks,? using the selective breaking mechanism. This research will leverage prior efforts in areas as diverse as surface haptics, wall-climbing robots and data storage read-write heads to realize an electro-adhesive device that is high-force and high-bandwidth and that can be used to control a high-density tactile array. By bringing these technologies together into fingertip-scale devices, it will be possible to demonstrate a wide range of surface haptic interactions including buttons, toggles, raised line drawings, braille characters, tactile graphics, and textures. Participatory design methods will be used to identify potential uses of TouchBot in the areas such as automotive and user interaction design. Experience prototype and rapid iteration will be used to create stimuli that evoke rich feedback.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH

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Tan, Sylvia and Klatzky, Roberta L. and Peshkin, Michael A. and Colgate, J. Edward "PixeLite: A Thin and Wearable High Bandwidth Electroadhesive Haptic Array" IEEE Transactions on Haptics , 2023 https://doi.org/10.1109/TOH.2023.3272635 Citation Details

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