A portable tactile display based on pin lateral traction

Abstract

This paper introduces a simple yet novel tactile display device based on the lateral traction of its contact pins. In this concept, a single row of eight pins slides laterally on a rail to display tactile information as a traditional upwards/downwards pin-matrix display does. The advantage of this concept is that a row of N pins can display some information that has been traditionally done with a matrix of N × N, thus, reducing significantly the number of actuators, simplifying their electronic drive, and allowing the development of low-cost, lightweight, compact, and highly-portable tactile displays. A first prototype has been developed using miniature DC motors to actuate the tactile pins along an 18 mm length rail at a 1 Hz refreshable bandwidth. Actuator, tactile display design, and prototype as well as user perceptual results are presented and discussed.