Parametric Haptics: Versatile Geometry-based Tactile Feedback Devices

Haptic feedback is important for immersive, assistive, or multimodal interfaces, but engineering devices that generalize across applications is notoriously difficult. To address the issue of versatility, we propose Parametric Haptics, geometry-based tactile feedback devices that are customizable to render a variety of tactile sensations. To achieve this, we integrate the actuation mechanism with the tactor geometry into passive 3D printable patches, which are then connected to a generic wearable actuation interface consisting of micro gear motors. The key benefit of our approach is that the 3D-printed patches are modular, can consist of varying numbers and shapes of tactors, and that the tactors can be grouped and moved by our actuation geometry over large areas of the skin. The patches are soft, thin, conformable, and easy to customize to different use cases, thus potentially enabling a large design space of diverse tactile sensations.