PUMAH : Pan-tilt Ultrasound Mid-Air Haptics

International audienceFocused ultrasound mid-air haptic interfaces are ideal for providing tactile feedback in Virtual Reality (VR), as they do not require the user to be tethered to, hold, or wear any device. Using an array of ultrasound emitters, they generate focused points of oscillating high pressure in mid-air, eliciting vibrotactile sensations when encountering a user's skin. These arrays feature a large vertical workspace, but are not capable of displaying stimuli far beyond their horizontal limits, severely limiting their workspace in the lateral dimensions. This demo presents the PUMAH, a low-cost 2 degrees-of-freedom robotic system rotating a focused ultrasound array around the pan and tilt axes, enabling multi-directional tactile feedback and increasing the array's workspace volume more than 14-fold