DESIGN AND MODELING OF AN ELECTRO-RHEOLOGICAL FLUID BASED HAPTIC INTERFACE

In this project, Rutgers University has teamed with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) to pursue the development and demonstration of a novel haptic interfacing capability called MEMICA (remote MEchanical MIrroring using Controlled stiffness and Actuators). MEMICA is intended to provide human operators intuitive and interactive feeling of the stiffness and forces at remote or virtual sites in support of space, medical, underwater, virtual reality, military and field robots performing dexterous manipulation operations. The key aspect of the MEMICA system is a miniature Electrically Controlled Stiffness (ECS) element that mirrors the stiffness at r emote/virtual sites. The ECS elements make use of ElectroRheological Fluid (ERF), which is an Electro-Active Polymer (EAP), to achieve this feeling of stiffness. Forces applied at the robot end-effector due to a compliant environment will be reflected to the user by this ERF device where a change in the system viscosity will occur proportionally to the force to be transmitted. This paper describes the analytical modeling and experiments that are currently underway to develop an ERF based force feedback element.