Development of Handheld Haptics Device for Driving System of Unmanned Underwater Vehicles

This paper presents a research aimed at illustrating hydrodynamic force impact on the orientation of a Remotely Operated Underwater Vehicle (ROV) operating underwater by providing kinaesthetic haptic feedback to its handheld steering device. To get more understanding on how this aim can be achieved, a literature review had been done on the haptic feedback which are available to ROV pilots and how it could be delivered through a handheld device. While some achievement were made in providing different cues to pilots on drag force and its influence on its speed, non-have been made to offer insight on how it had affected ROVs orientation through haptic feedback. This study found that currently available handheld haptic device, while successfully delivering tactile feedback, are not capable of providing kinaesthetic feedback at par with the grounded haptic device. To address this, a series of thrusters has been introduced as a new actuation technique in providing kinaesthetic feedback on a handheld device in all three axes. This would allow total illustration of ROV orientation through haptic feedback. This paper has summarized and discussed our findings in our literature review, followed by some details of the proposed method.

Novel Haptic Device Using Jamming Principle for Providing Kinaesthetic Feedback in Glove-Based Control Interface

This paper presents a new type of wearable haptic device which can augment a sensor glove in various tasks of telemanipulation. We present the details of its two alternative designs jamming tubes or jamming pads, and their control system. These devices use the jamming phenomena to change the stiffness of their elements and block the hand movement when a vacuum is applied. We present results of our experiments to measure static and dynamic changes in stiffness, which can be used to change the perception of grabbing hard or soft objects. The device, at its current state is capable of resisting forces of up to 7 N with 5 mm displacement and can simulate hardness up to the hardness of a rubber. However, time necessary for a complete change of stiffness is high (time constant 0.5 s); therefore, additional cutaneous interface was added in a form of small vibration motors. Finally, we show an application of the haptic interface in our teleoperation system to provide the operator with haptic feedback in a light weight and simple form.

Missing kinaesthesia challenges precise naturalistic cortical prosthetic control

A major assumption of brain-machine interface (BMI) research is that patients with disconnected neural pathways can still volitionally recall precise motor commands that could be decoded for naturalistic prosthetic control. However, the disconnected condition of these patients also blocks kinaesthetic feedback from the periphery, which has been shown to regulate centrally generated output responsible for accurate motor control. Here we tested how well motor commands are generated in the absence of kinaesthetic feedback by decoding hand movements from human scalp electroencephalography (EEG) in three conditions: unimpaired movement, imagined movement, and movement attempted during temporary disconnection of peripheral afferent and efferent nerves by ischemic nerve block. Our results suggest that the recall of cortical motor commands is impoverished in absence of kinaesthetic feedback, challenging the possibility of precise naturalistic cortical prosthetic control.