Display of Haptic Shape Using Ultrasound Pressure Distribution Forming Cross-Sectional Shape

In this paper, we propose a method for expressing the shape of a virtual object using ultrasound tactile presentation. In this method, the cross-sectional shape of a finger penetrating the virtual object is estimated from a point cloud acquired by a depth sensor. An ultrasound focus is moved around the cross-sectional shape at a high speed, which enables the generation of a pressure distribution on the finger corresponding to the position of the object surface. This method can be applied to any 3D polygon mesh model, and the local shape of the model can be recognized from the change in the pressure distribution when the finger is inserted into it. We conducted a numerical simulation and a user study to verify the effectiveness of this method for object shape recognition.