Development and Characterization of a Wearable Ring Providing Haptic Feedback

Comfort and efficiency are the essential features of any wearable device. A variety of devices use vibration to provide haptic feedback to the user. In this study, a novel haptic flexible ring equipped with four actuators is developed to enhance the user experience for tactile interfaces. The proposed device provides subcutaneous clues at the proximal interphalangeal joint of the index finger to mimic the forces and moments applied to this joint. Thresholding experiments are conducted using a total of nine subjects to evaluate the effects of the vibration amplitude, thickness, and orientation of 1D lines on human perception. The results showed that as the line's thickness and amplitude increase, the participants perform better at identifying the shapes. The minimum thickness that the human participants can detect is 2 mm at the lowest possible vibration level with a single motor. Furthermore, the second vibration amplitude and vertical orientation lead to higher recognition rates and lower recognition times. In the future, we aim to perform further characterization experiments and develop virtual reality applications to test the proposed ring.