Do it yourself haptics: part I

This article is the first of a two-part series intended as an introduction to haptic interfaces. Together they pro-vide a general introduction to haptic interfaces, their con-struction and application design. Haptic interfaces com-prise hardware and software components aiming at provid-ing computer-controlled, programmable sensations of me-chanical nature, that is, pertaining to the sense of touch. In this article (Part I), we describe methods which have been researched and developed to date to achieve the generation of haptic sensations, the means to construct experimental devices of modest complexity, and the software components needed to drive them. In Part II of this this series, we will describe some basic concepts of haptic interaction design together with several interesting applications based on this technology.