Development of a miniature pin-array tactile module using elastic and electromagnetic force for mobile devices

In these days, tactile sensation using a vibration motor is recently receiving attention for immersive interaction with mobile devices. However, the vibration motor is not enough to provide detailed texture or small-scale shape. In order to generate various and exiting tactile sensation, this paper presents a new tactile actuator with a solenoid, a permanent magnet and an elastic spring. This paper also proposes a miniature tactile module with the proposed actuators. On constructing a miniature tactile module, we separate the elastic springs in the actuators into several layers to minimize the contactor´s gap without decreasing the performance of the tactile module. We conduct experiments to investigate each contactor´s output force and the frequency response of the proposed tactile module. Each contactor can generate enough output force to stimulate human´s mechanoreceptors. Moreover, since the contactors are actuated in a wide range of frequency, the proposed tactile module can generate various tactile sensations.