Tactile and kinaesthetic feedback in virtual environments

Virtual reality technology has great potential for design for assembly, disassembly and maintenance but such manipulation tasks by their very nature involve tactile and kinaesthetic interaction. Consequently, a new generation of fools needs to be developed to provide the appropriate tactile/kinaesthetic feedback to the user in order to complement the traditional visual technology. Three feedback devices will be described arising from research supported by the EPSRC and BRITE-EURAM. (1) A 2 1/2-D programmable surface using shape-memory alloy wires. (2) A surface with programmable compliance using electro-rheological fluids. Haptic searching over the surface gives the illusion of the presence of an object. (3) The Reactabot(TM), a robot-like device,which provides force feedback to the user and is programmed to mimic the dynamic characteristics of the object and its interaction both with the environment and the operator.