Electrostatic tactile display for presenting surface roughness sensation

A new tactile display using electrostatic force and friction control has been developed for presenting surface roughness sensation. The device consists of stator electrodes and a thin film slider, on which aluminium conductive layer is deposited. A user puts his index finger on the slider and moves it horizontally to obtain certain tactile sensation. By applying various voltage patterns to stator electrodes, various friction distributions can be generated on the slider, which are transferred to the fingertip so as to generate surface roughness sensation in the subject´s nerve system. In this system, finger position is detected by linear encoder equipped on the slider. Applied voltage to the stator is modulated according to the position. Resultantly, the device can simulate fine surface textures with a resolution of several tens of micrometers, even though stator electrodes are aligned with a pitch of 1mm. In this paper, the principle of the device and some simple experimental results are reported. Also, we report a combination of the electrostatic tactile display and LCD visual display.