Pneumatic actuator and flexible piezoelectric sensor for soft virtual reality glove system

Kahye Song, Sung Hee Kim, Sungho Jin, Sohyun Kim, Sunho Lee, Jun Sik Kim, Jung Min Park, Youngsu Cha

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

109 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

The desire to directly touch and experience virtual objects led to the development of a tactile feedback device. In this paper, a novel soft pneumatic actuator for providing tactile feedback is proposed and demonstrated. The suggested pneumatic actuator does not use an external air compressor but it is operated by internal air pressure generated by an electrostatic force. By using the actuator, we designed a glove to interact with virtual reality. The finger motions are detected by attached flexible piezoelectric sensors and transmitted to a virtual space through Bluetooth for interconnecting with a virtual hand. When the virtual finger touches the virtual object, the actuators are activated and give the tactile feedback to the real fingertip. The glove is made of silicone rubber material and integrated with the sensors and actuators such that users can wear them conveniently with light weight. This device was tested in a virtual chess board program, wherein the user picked up virtual chess pieces successfully.

Original languageEnglish
Article number8988
JournalScientific reports
Volume9
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2019 Dec 1
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
This work was supported in part by the Global Frontier R&D Program on ‘Human-centered Interaction for Coexistence’ through the National Research Foundation of Korea grant funded by the Korean Government(MSIP) (2011-0031425). We deeply thanks to Yoonjeong Cho for supporting us with the schematics.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2019, The Author(s).

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General

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