Electromagnetic-Actuated Soft Tactile Device Using a Pull-Push Latch Structure

Yuan Guo, Qianqian Tong, Pengbo Zhao, Yuru Zhang, Dangxiao Wang

Abstract: Tactile devices composed of tactile pixels enable dynamic formulation of surface morphological features. It, however, remains a challenge for soft tactile devices to reliably achieve low-power control of each tactile pixel while maintaining high spatial resolution. In this article, we proposed a novel pull–push latch structure and developed a programmable electromagnetic-actuated soft tactile device. Each tactile pixel of the device is individually controlled by a coil. The pull–push latch structure is capable of maintaining the pit depth of tactile pixels without energy consumption. By simultaneously controlling the current direction and on–off state of multiple coils, our tactile device with 3 mm spatial resolution can reliably form different tactile patterns. The energy consumption of a single coil is 59.15 mJ in a 6-s work cycle, which is about 0.34% of that of the tactile device without the latch structure. The user study indicates that the average discrimination accuracy of different patterns rendered by our tactile device is greater than 81%.