Portable Tactile Feedback Interface in Virtual Space

近年，高解像度プロジェクタを用いて大型スクリーンに仮想空間の立体映像を投影する没入型ディスプレイが注目されている．このような没入感のある仮想空間内で，操作者と仮想空間とのあいだで臨場感のある双方向性を実現するためには，操作者に直接装着して広い行動範囲を確保する装着型接触感覚ディスプレイの開発が重要となる．本報では，マトリックス状に配列された複数のノズルから空気流を噴射させ，それらの位相を変化させて操作者の指先に接触感覚を擬似的に提示する触覚ディスプレイの，提示予備実験の知見と試作装置への適用結果,および立方体を用いた触覚提示実験の結果について報告する．The authors have developed portable force feedback displays to realize the use of force feedback for telerobotic and large-scale virtual environment applications. Tactile sensations as well as force sensations, however, are also required for initial contact detection to virtual objects, because force feedback does not come about prior to any manipulation tasks. In this paper, we have developed a portable tactile display using air jet on a trial purpose to give local shapes of virtual objects and have conducted an evaluation of the perceptual characteristics of the air jet stimulator and the two point difference threshold of index finger pads and thumb finger pads. The tactile display has a eight element array tactile stimulator. In our experiments, subjects are tested to see if they can perceived patterns presented to their finger pad with the device. Two test sets of a cubic geometry shape; the corners, the edge, and the plane surface of the cubic on a PC or a graphics workstation are used to present. It is experimentally verified that the portable display provides the contact sensation for cubic objects