Multifinger haptic interface for bimanual manipulation of virtual objects

A multi-finger haptic interface called MasterFinger for bimanual manipulation of virtual objects is described in this paper. The index fingers and the thumbs are inserted in their corresponding thimbles in order to perform virtual manipulations. A gimble with 3-rotational degree of freedom connects the thimble to a serial-parallel mechanical structure that is made up of 3 electro-mechanical actuators. This mechanism thereby provides 6 DoF of movement with force reflection in all directions. A distributed architecture has been implemented to simulate bimanual manipulations. This architecture is based on the use of a specific controller for each finger and a server computer that simulates the virtual manipulation in real time. Some experiments that evaluate the performance of the MasterFinger are described.