development of wearable micro-actuator array for 3-d virtual tactile displays开发可穿戴micro-actuator阵列三维虚拟触觉显示器.pdfVIP

Journal of Electromagnetic Analysis and Applications, 2012, 4, 219-229 219 / 10.4236/jemaa.2012.46031 Published Online June 2012 (http://www.SciRP.org/journal/jemaa) Development of Wearable Micro-Actuator Array for 3-D Virtual Tactile Displays * Zoltan Szabo, Eniko T. Enikov University of Arizona, Tucson, USA. * Email: enikov@ Received April 14th, 2012; revised May 15th, 2012; accepted May 25th, 2012 ABSTRACT A novel 4 by 4 array of electromagnetic micro-actuators operating on the principle of voice-coil actuators is presented. The intended application of the array is dynamic tactile stimulation, where multiple actuators generate an illusion of touching a moving pattern. In comparison to earlier designs [1-3], the device has smaller dimensions of 2.28 mm in diameter and 7 mm in length, which allowed its use in an array capable of hosting up to a 5 by 5 set of actuators with a rectangular shape covering an area of 18 mm by 21 mm. Using finite element analysis of several conceptual designs of actuators [1,4,5], it was established that the voice-coil type device (where the coil is the moving part) has most benefi- cial characteristics for the envisioned application. These include sufficient force over a relatively large distance, allow- ing tactile stimulation of surfaces with irregular shape, fast response, and small foot-print that matches the density of the tactile sensory neurons in the human finger. Eexperimental evaluation of the operation of neighboring actuators spaced at 3.3 mm apart, indicates that there is no crosstalk between the actuators. The resulting density exceeds that of previ- ously reported alternative designs based on moveable permanent magnets [4,6]. Static force measurement indicate that each micro-actuator can produce at least 26 mN of repulsive force over a stroke of 2100 µm with a peak force o