Haptic rendering: An approach to tactile property perception in early product design

Abstract

In today's competitive market place, product designers need to elaborate their design with respect to not only the form and function but also the tactile properties, which make the product safe and comfortable to use. Several examples of these tactile properties are stiffness, surface finish, and trigger actuation force. Because of the expensive redesign processes, requirements on these tactile properties should be considered as constraints and should be brought into the product development cycle as early as possible. However, current visual feedback-based computer-aided design (CAD) systems focus mainly on product geometrical properties, such as dimension and appearance. Tactile properties are difficult or even impossible to be perceived in current CAD systems. In this paper, haptic rendering techniques are introduced as an approach to the perception of tactile properties and hand tool design case studies are demonstrated. With the aid of a force feedback device, Phantom®, designers can perceive the surface roughness of a handle, the stiffness of a toothbrush, and examine the actuation force of a switch button. With these tools, designers can not only design the form of a product but also evaluate some physical properties of a product design in real time before the product is made, thus shortening the product development cycle. © IMechE 2005.