A Soft Pneumatic Haptic Actuator Mechanically Programmed for Providing Mechanotactile Feedback

Tactile sense provides us with the necessary information and feedback to determined tasks. Within this context, haptic devices represent a growing and highly interesting field to be included in biomedical devices, teleoperation applications, and video games. These devices are usually developed with rigid materials, motors, and mechanisms to provide tactile feedback to individuals that corresponds to a defined task, producing pressure, tangential force or vibrations as stimuli on the skin. Here, we present a prototype of a soft pneumatic haptic device based on an inflatable hyperelastic membrane, that can provide two stimuli over skin such as pression and traction with only one input of energy. The device was fabricated using different types of silicone materials and membrane shapes. This exhibits experimentally a maximum vertical deformation of 13 mm and a tangential displacement of 10 mm at 7 kPa. These two mechanically programmed movements open the possibility of using this technology in mechano-tactile feedback for wearable devices, with low-cost hardware, soft interaction between devices and skin, and lightweight.