Haptics Analyzer

Active haptics is a new promising technology aiming at adding to standard touch devices (like touch buttons, touch pads, touch screens) a vibration effect that gives a feedback to the user’s finger. The feedback general use is to confirm that a specific action has been done (a touch button has been pushed, a gesture has been recognized) avoiding other feedback solutions (an example is a status LED that require the user to look at it).

Active haptics can generate nearly unlimited different haptic effects as it is driven by the software, and more: the effects can be applied to different surfaces. On one side, all this flexibility brings to an incredible number of new possibilities, on the other side, the standard way to identify and measure haptic effects, like S-Curve, is not satisfactory.

The Haptics Analyzer instrument has been defined to answer to the main questions an engineer will ask when trying to develop or validate an active haptic system:

When a haptic pulse is delivered to a finger of a user, what is the perception level?
Is it possible to increase/decrease the perception level of a specific amount?
Is it possible to identify a haptic effect and reproduce it in another device?
Is it possible to create a haptic pulse as similar as possible to a mechanical switch?
What is the contribute of an actuator and what is the contribute of the surface to the haptic sensation?

Haptics experts know that trying to answer to the previous questions using ‘subjective’ judgments will bring to a nearly infinite number of test sessions. The Haptic Analyzer instrument has been defined to give immediate ‘objective’ answer instead of not reliable ‘subjective’ answers.

The proposed method to measure the haptic perception of a haptic vibration is to create four different diagrams: the haptic surface acceleration profile in time, the PSD diagram (Power Spectrum Distribution, well known diagram for vibration analysis), the Haptic Energy evolution in time, the “Haptic Relative Perception Level calculation”. These four diagrams can be shown together filtered with the “Human Haptic Perception Filter” [HHPF] in order to give the objective description of the human haptic perception of a vibration.

The Haptics Analyzer instrument is composed of a set of sensors and cables, a USB data acquisition device, a software application to be installed on your standard Windows PC.

PRODUCTS:

HAPTICS ANALYZER

Overview

For more scientific information about how the instrument is working please read the

The Haptics Analyzer sensors and interface Kit:

STANDARD Version

ACOUSTIC Version