FlexHaptics: A Design Method for Passive Haptic Inputs Using Planar Compliant Structures

Abstract

This paper presents FlexHaptics, a design method for creating custom haptic input interfaces. Our approach leverages planar compliant structures whose force-deformation relationship can be altered by adjusting the geometries. Embedded with such structures, a FlexHaptics module exerts a fine-tunable haptic effect (i.e., resistance, detent, or bounce) along a movement path (i.e., linear, rotary, or ortho-planar). These modules can work separately or combine into an interface with complex movement paths and haptic effects. To enable the parametric design of FlexHaptic modules, we provide a design editor that converts user-specified haptic properties into underlying mechanical structures of haptic modules. We validate our approach and demonstrate the potential of FlexHaptic modules through six application examples, including a slider control for a painting application and a piano keyboard interface on touchscreens, a tactile low vision timer, VR game controllers, and a compound input device of a joystick and a two-step button.

Authors
Hongnan Lin
Georgia Institute of Technology , Atlanta, Georgia, United States
Liang He
University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, United States
Fangli Song
School of design, Atlanta, Georgia, United States
Yifan Li
Georgia Institute of Technology , Atlanta, Georgia, United States
Tingyu Cheng
Interactive Computing, Atlanta, Georgia, United States
Clement Zheng
National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore, Singapore
Wei Wang
Hunan University, Changsha, China
HyunJoo Oh
Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia, United States
Paper URL

https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3491102.3502113

Video

Conference: CHI 2022

The ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (https://chi2022.acm.org/)

Session: Haptic Sensing

386
4 items in this session
2022-05-02 11:00:00
2022-05-02 12:15:00