A new electrostatic tactile display is proposed to realize compact tactile display devices that can be incorporated with virtual reality systems. The tactile display of this study consists of a thin conductive film slider with stator electrodes that excite electrostatic forces. Users of the device experience tactile texture sensations by moving the slider with their fingers. The display operates by applying two-phase cyclic voltage patterns to the electrodes. The display is incorporated into a tactile telepresentation system to realize explorations of remote surface textures with real-time tactile feedback. In the system, a PVDF tactile sensor and a DSP controller automatically generate voltage patterns to present surface texture sensations through the tactile display. A sensor, in synchronization with finger motion on the tactile display, scans a texture sample and outputs information about the sample surface. The information is processed by a DSP and fed back to the tactile display in real time. The tactile telepresentation system was evaluated in texture discrimination tests and demonstrated a 79 percent correct answer ratio. A transparent electrostatic tactile display is also reported in which the tactile display is combined with an LCD to realize a visual-tactile integrated display system.

This paper introduces an approach for manipulating bodily self-consciousness, in particular, senses of body ownership and illusory self-touch by using a robotic/haptic technology. This study especially focuses on the rubber hand illusion (RHI). In the classic RHI paradigm, an invisible participant's hand and a visible fake rubber hand are manually stimulated by an experimenter. However, our approach, which is termed active self-touch, allows the participants to administrate the tactile stimulation with variable force feedback by using a robotic master-slave system. Three RHI experiments with active self-touch were performed to demonstrate the utility of the proposed approach for assessment of bodily self-consciousness. The embodiment of a fake hand was assessed with the classic RHI paradigm, and the RHI paradigm with somatic sensation was applied to examine the effect of variable force feedback on the sense of illusory self-touch. These experiments verified that active self-touch allows participants to experience the classic RHI. In addition, the results implied that the sense of illusory self-touch can be induced, even if force feedback is absent in the dynamic self-touch condition, and that illusory sensation is easily modulated by variable force feedback during quasi-static self-touch rather than during dynamic self-touch. These findings suggest that our proposed approach has the potential to reveal relationships between action/haptic perception and the sense of body ownership.

This paper presents a project that aims at constructing a biologically inspired fish-like robot. The robot is designed to be capable of propelling itself through oscillations of a flexible caudal fin, like a real underwater fish. In particular, the caudal fin is driven by a mechanism actuated by a unique actuator called electrostatic film motor. In this paper, the dynamics of the electrostatic film motor are briefly introduced so as to well understand its characteristics and behavior. Based on the theoretical analysis and several design considerations inspired by biological concepts, we realize the fish-like robot actuated by an electrostatic film motor and propose swimming control methods for it. Experiments are carried out to confirm the validity of the original design and control. The current robot achieves fish-like maneuvering and approximate velocity of 0.018 m/s in dielectric liquid.

The bending of slide‐ring materials (SRMs), polymer materials having ring‐shaped cross‐linking points providing deterioration tolerance and low hysteresis, is described. An SRM sheet exhibits a voltage‐controllable, extremely large, fast, and bidirectional bending deformation with shape memory functionality. A 50‐μm‐thick SRM sheet actuator exhibits an electrostatic actuation in two opposite directions and bending angle larger than 180° achieved within 0.4 s due to its shape memory effect. The memory effect remains for more than 250 min. As a potential application utilizing the bending of the SRM, a soft gripper is fabricated, which handles two objects placed opposite each other. This functionality is rarely achieved by a soft gripper composed of a single active material, which shows the characteristics of the SRM promising for the development of soft matter systems with novel functionalities and high performances.