String-based force display for mobile haptics

Haptic interface is a human-machine interface that can provide feedback based on recreating the sense of touch by applying force, vibrations or motion to the users. Recently, a variety of haptic devices, such as PHANTOM, have been proposed. However, outside the academic sphere, few people feel familiar with either these devices or haptic technology. One possible reason is very likely to be that in order to realize haptic feedback with high quality, most haptic interface devices have to be built in heavy, large and complex forms, which reduces the ease and potential for people to get access to them. At the other hand, with the rapid evolution of technology, mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablet PCs, are becoming more and more popular nowadays, boasting much higher possession rate, as well as performance than several years before. Therefore, in order to introduce haptic technology to more people, this paper pays attention to mobile application of haptic technology, and proposes SPIADAR-S, a string-based, compact haptic device with 1 degree of freedom, which can be mounted on common mobile devices through the 3.5 mm audio jack. The string-based structure is inspired by the string-based force display SPIDAR.