A Soft Vibrotactile Actuator with Knitted PVC Gel Fabric

This paper proposes a soft vibrotactile actuator providing users with more functions in less space and improved usability in wearable and/or shape-changing devices. Previously, we have developed a soft vibrotactile actuator based on non-petroleum-based, eco-friendly, and electroactive plasticized poly-vinyl-chloride (PVC) gel formed as wave shape. One of the key differences between the electroactive PVC gel and the traditional electroactive polymers is that PVC gel does not need any stretchable electrodes. Although wave-shaped actuator improves the performance, it is possible that the ridges in PVC gel based actuators will be flayed from the body. In this paper, we introduce a new soft vibrotactile actuator using knitted PVC gel fabric. We measure the displacement of the actuator to quantitatively investigate the performance of the proposed actuator, and furthermore we performed a perceptual evaluation to compare the vibration strength of the proposed actuator and a rigid commercialized actuator. The results show that the proposed actuator can create vibration amplitude strong enough to stimulate human skin.