A haptic device based on an approximate plane

In recent years, research of haptic interface has been attracting attentions of researchers. By using haptic devices, people can easily handle 3D objects. Therefore, it is expected to be used for applications such as simulation in medical fields or remote control of robots. Falcon [1] and PHANToM [2] are one of the famous haptic devices. These devices have controller or pen to let user touch virtual objects. Furthermore, these devices can also provide a sense of force by each point of virtual objects for user. These haptic devices are classified as one point contact type haptic device. Users can experience as if he pokes virtual objects by using these haptic devices. However, point contact type haptic devices cannot perform a sense of force and a sense of touch at the same time. We define this sense of touch as the sense of friction caused by different materials. In order to perform more realistic sense of touch, we attempt to perform both a sense of force and a sense of touch at the same time. To realize this purpose, we developed a novel haptic device.