Development of a desk-type tactile interface using force sensors

This paper describes a technique to provide tactile sense to a desk by a simple mechanism. The tactile sense is provided to the whole body of the desk by fixing a force sensor on each leg. One of the advantages of this technique is that the contact point can be estimated without any sensor device on the surface of the desk. The desk can be used as a kind of a tactile interface by utilizing the advantage. Some examples of application using the desk with computer graphics are introduced.