Browse Topic: Haptic / touch
Crew Station design in the physical realm is complex and expensive due to the cost of fabrication and the time required to reconfigure necessary hardware to conduct studies for human factors and optimization of space claim. However, recent advances in Virtual Reality (VR) and hand tracking technologies have enabled a paradigm shift to the process. The Ground Vehicle System Center has developed an innovative approach using VR technologies to enable a trade space exploration capability which provides crews the ability to place touchscreens and switch panels as desired, then lock them into place to perform a fully recorded simulation of operating the vehicle through a virtual terrain, maneuvering through firing points and engaging moving and static targets during virtual night and day missions with simulated sensor effects for infrared and night vision. Human factors are explored and studied using hand tracking which enables operators to check reach by interacting with virtual components
Today’s intelligent robots can accurately recognize many objects through vision and touch. Tactile information, obtained through sensors, along with machine learning algorithms, enables robots to identify objects previously handled
Using electrical impedance tomography (EIT), researchers have developed a system using a flexible tactile sensor for objective evaluation of fine finger movements. Demonstrating high accuracy in classifying diverse pinching motions, with discrimination rates surpassing 90 percent, this innovation holds potential in cognitive development and automated medical research
While there is a tendency for new vehicles to have a focus on ride, handling, performance and other dynamic elements, the model year 2024 Lincoln Nautilus team added another element to how the driver will experience the midsize SUV. Not that the ride, handling, etc. were ignored, but the global design and engineering team wanted to do something different with this two-row SUV. Recognize that this is a vehicle with a sumptuous interior that includes not only first-class seating (24-way adjustable front seats) and materials (Alpine Venetian leather available on the seats; cashmere for the headliner) but also an available high-end Revel Ultima 3D audio system with 28 speakers. What's more, there's “Lincoln Digital Scent,” small electronically activated pods containing various aromas (e.g., Mystic Forest, Ozonic Azure, Violet Cashmere). Across the top of the instrument panel there is a 48-inch backlit LCD screen and a 11.1-inch touchscreen in the center stack
Personal devices feed our sight and hearing virtually unlimited streams of information while leaving our sense of touch mostly … untouched
Engineers like to know what customers think about a vehicle. Now, drivers of the all-electric Ford F-150 Lightning and Mustang Mach-E can oblige via a new system that channels select customer comments to engineers. F-150 Lightning fullsize pickup truck and Mustang Mach-E SUV owners in the U.S. can pass along opinions via a 45-second voice message after selecting “record feedback” through the settings-general menu on the infotainment touchscreen. “We want to hear the customer's voice. Ford does customer clinics and events, but this is a different way to capture customer feedback,” Donna Dickson, chief engineer of the Ford Mustang Mach-E, said in an interview with SAE Media
Achieving human-level dexterity during manipulation and grasping has been a long-standing goal in robotics. To accomplish this, having a reliable sense of tactile information and force is essential for robots. A recent study, published in IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, describes the L3 F-TOUCH sensor that enhances the force sensing capabilities of classic tactile sensors. The sensor is lightweight, low-cost, and wireless, making it an affordable option for retrofitting existing robot hands and graspers
Startups are famous for moving quickly. Vinfast may want to slow things down. It was only 2019 when the Vietnamese company built its first cars, rebodied versions of gasoline BMWs that became hits in its home market. Vinfast speedily developed four electric SUVs, including the inaugural VF8 that SAE Media drove in southern California. At the same time, a cargo ship docked near San Francisco, carrying nearly 2,000 VF8s for customers in California and Canada. The next day, Vinfast announced plans to go public via a SPAC merger. And Vinfast recently broke ground on a $4 billion factory in North Carolina, targeting 150,000 units of annual capacity and more than 7,000 jobs
Extra-Vehicular Activity (EVA) spacesuits are both enabling and limiting. Because pressurization results in stiffening of the pressure garment, an astronaut’s motions and mobility are significantly restricted during EVAs. Dexterity, in particular, is severely reduced. Astronauts are commonly on record identifying spacesuit gloves as a top-priority item in their EVA apparel needing significant improvement. Apollo 17 astronaut-geologist Harrison “Jack” Schmitt has singled out hand fatigue and dexterity as the top two problems to address in EVA spacesuit design for future Moon and Mars exploration. The NASA-STD-3000 standards document indeed states: “Space suit gloves degrade tactile proficiency compared to bare hand operations... Attention should be given to the design of manual interfaces to preclude or minimize hand fatigue or physical discomfort
Technology capable of replicating the sense of touch — also known as haptic feedback — can greatly enhance human-computer and human-robot interfaces for applications such as medical rehabilitation and virtual reality. A soft artificial skin was developed that provides haptic feedback and, using a self-sensing mechanism, has the potential to instantaneously adapt to a wearer’s movements
Researchers have developed a simple, yet effective approach for on-demand tactile sensing in minimally invasive surgery, overcoming a key limitation — the inability of surgeons to feel tissues during an operation. The tool uses off-the-shelf sensors integrated into a laparoscopic grasper
A research team from Chemnitz and Dresden has taken a major step forward in the development of sensitive electronic skin (e-skin) with integrated artificial hairs. E-skins are flexible electronic systems that try to mimic the sensitivity of their natural human skin counterparts. Applications range from skin replacement and medical sensors on the body to artificial skin for humanoid robots and androids
High-fidelity touch has the potential to significantly expand the scope of what we expect from computing devices, making new remote sensory experiences possible. The research on these advancements, led by a pair of researchers at Texas A&M University, could help touch-screens simulate virtual shapes
Through the use of magnetic fields, scientists have developed an electronic sensor that can simultaneously process both touchless and tactile stimuli. Prior attempts have so far failed to combine these functions on a single device due to overlapping signals of the various stimuli
Graphene — hexagonally arranged carbon atoms in a single layer with superior pliability and high conductivity — could impact the development of future motion detection, tactile sensing, and health monitoring devices
Tactile feel of vehicle touch points and boom feel inside vehicle cabin are some of the important criteria of the customer choice while making the buying decisions in the dealership or on a test drive. This tactile and acoustic feel of a vehicle is majorly governed by the low frequency mode management achieved while designing the vehicle. Different parameters like inclusion of multiple powertrains on a vehicle program, choice of multiple way seating different at driver’s, front passenger’s and rear passengers’ seating positions, instrument panel and steering system layouts having higher torque delivery, suspension modes of the front and rear axles based on their articulation and degree of independency, global modes of the vehicle body, the cabin air cavity configuration and volume, etc. play a significant role in deciding this tactile and acoustic feel of the vehicle being designed. How these parameters were tuned and designed while developing a premium hatchback car has been
This paper investigates the effect of tire inflation pressure on the directional stability of All Wheel Drive (AWD) vehicles during high-speed off-road maneuvers over different soft terrains such as loam, sand and clay. For this purpose, a fourteen-degrees-of-freedom (14-DOF) full parametrized vehicle model is employed and numerically simulated in MATLAB/Simulink environment to represent the full vehicle body dynamics such as roll, yaw and pitch motions. In order to calculate tire forces and moments over deformable terrains, the AS2TM Soft Soil Tire Model was successfully integrated with the vehicle model which enabled the possibility of changing tire pressure and consequently investigate its effect on vehicle dynamics. Numerous simulations are carried out to examine vehicle handling in case of different tires inflation pressure during steady state turning maneuvers such as ramp steer input. Simulation results at both moderate and high-speed turning maneuvers showed that changing tire
In a paper published in Nature Machine Intelligence, a team of scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems (MPI-IS) introduced a robust soft haptic sensor named “Insight” that uses computer vision and a deep neural network to accurately estimate where objects come into contact with the sensor and how large the applied forces are. The research project is a significant step toward robots being able to feel their environment as accurately as humans and animals. Like its natural counterpart, the fingertip sensor is very sensitive, robust, and high resolution
A new kind of fiber called OmniFibers can be made into clothing that senses how much it is being stretched or compressed and then provides immediate tactile feedback in the form of pressure, lateral stretch, or vibration. Such fabrics could be used in garments that help train singers or athletes to better control their breathing or that help patients recovering from disease or surgery to recover their breathing patterns
The wearable device turns the touch of a finger into a source of power for small electronics and sensors. It can be used in any daily activity involving touch; for example, things a person would normally do while at work, at home, while watching TV, or eating
Each human fingertip has more than 3,000 touch receptors that largely respond to pressure. Humans rely heavily on sensation in their fingertips when manipulating an object, so the lack of this sensation presents a unique challenge for individuals with upper limb amputations. While there are several dexterous prosthetics available today, they all lack the sensation of “touch.” The absence of this sensory feedback results in objects inadvertently being dropped or crushed by a prosthetic hand
The design and tuning of stiffness and damping parameters of the suspension system is an essential step in arriving at the optimal riding comfort for a two wheeler. The conventional method of suspension design involves selecting baseline values of suspension parameters through bench-marking of similar vehicles, followed by extensive real life tests to tune these parameters over different load, speed and track conditions. This conventional approach is often time consuming and heavily dependent on physical prototypes of suspension. With the advent of tools to run optimization on Multi-Body Dynamic (MBD) simulations, a near complete tuning of suspension parameters can be performed entirely in the simulation domain. This paper presents an integrated approach towards the design and tuning of suspension stiffness and damping parameters using MBD simulations, by employing fully parameterized suspension stiffness and damping curves in the optimization process. The optimization is performed on
The interior floor of a vehicle cabin occupies a significant amount of surface area in proportion to the cabin as a whole, and as such provides a prime opportunity for acoustic treatment. Generally speaking, floor materials must be relatively limp to achieve high acoustic performance. However, the tactile quality of a vehicle floor is very important. The end customer has an expectation for how it should feel to step onto the floor of a vehicle: a carpet should “give” slightly, but not compress fully, under pressure. A carpet that is too stiff or not stiff enough may be perceived as indicative of low quality. Thus, acoustic targets and stiffness targets tend to be at odds. A vehicle interior floor is a trim component which consists of different layers and which can have different pile-up configurations. Such a pile-up typically consists of a soft layer, called a decoupler, and a top layer. Previous work has shown how CAE tools can predict part-level compression behavior during design
Aresearch team developed a soft tactile sensor with skin-comparable characteristics. A robotic gripper with the sensor mounted at the fingertip could accomplish challenging tasks such as stably grasping fragile objects and threading a needle
This paper presents a decoupled solution for mapping and validating complex and dynamic user interfaces (UI). Creating unique and satisfying user experiences are becoming the focus of products whereas digital user interfaces are a big part of this delivery. This tendency is coming to complex real-time systems, thus, growing the need of a proper validation of digital UIs considering its intrinsic requirements and limitations. The previous framework that ran the touchscreen tests required changes in case of UI updates while the matrix-like structure proposed gives a correlation between all to all clickable objects thus mapping all possible pathways to the many different screens. This application was implemented according to the following steps: 1) Adjustment of the adjacency considering the method of interaction with the UI. 2) Implementation of the methods created to read the matrix structure. 3) Implementation of the interaction between the software library and the hardware unit under
Matei Ciocarlie, Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Columbia University, has developed, with his team, a robotic finger that has a sense of touch that can be localized with high precision over a large, multi-curved surface
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