Design and simulation of a side-faced-type multi-fingered haptic interface

This paper presents a new type of multi-fingered haptic interface, which allows for the grasping of small objects and bimanual manipulation in a virtual reality environment. The interface consists of a haptic arm with 6 DOF, which is placed on the side face of the operator and a haptic hand with 15 DOF, which is put on the back of the operator´s hand. A combination control approach with the PI force control for the haptic hand and a position control for the haptic arm is adopted. The desired hand position and orientation is decided so as to maximize the sum of the hand manipulability index and the penalty function of the interference between human hand and haptic hand. Design and simulation results of the proposed interface are shown.