HapSense

A soft haptic I/O device with uninterrupted dual functionalities of force sensing and vibrotactile actuation

We present HapSense, a single-volume soft haptic I/O device with uninterrupted dual functionalities of force sensing and vibrotactile actuation.  To achieve both input and output functionalities, we employ a ferroelectric electroactive polymer as core functional material with a multilayer structure design.  We introduce haptic I/O hardware that supports tunable high-driving voltage waveform for vibrotactile actuation while in-situ sensing a change in capacitance from contact force.  With mechanically soft nature of fabricated structure, HapSense can be embedded onto various object surfaces such as furniture or garments or even the human body.  Through a series of experiments and evaluations, we characterized physical properties of HapSense and validated the feasibility of using soft haptic I/O with real users.  We demonstrated a variety of interaction scenarios using HapSense.

This project was a collaboration between the Applied Sciences Group at Microsoft and the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering at the University of Washington.