Development of an Electrostatic Beat Module for Various Tactile Sensations in Touch Screen Devices

Featured Application This paper is an extended version of our paper published in Proceedings of the International AsiaHaptics Conference 2016, Kashiwanoha, Japan, 29 November-1 December 2016; pp. 181-184. In this paper, we presented a detailed design of the electrostatic beat (ETB) module, its fabrication process and its operating principle. Furthermore, we quantitatively and qualitatively investigated the vibrational behavior of the proposed ETB module. One of the most dominant factors in developing tactile modules is the ability to generate abundant vibrotactile sensation. This paper presents a new vibrotactile module which can stimulate two mechanoreceptors at the same time without any mechanical vibration motors. To realize that, we first design an electro-tactile beat module (an ETB module) consisting of a lower part, a connection part and an upper part. The two electrodes were designed in an interdigitated pattern and were applied to the upper part. By applying two voltage inputs with slightly different frequencies to two electrodes in the proposed ETB module, respectively, we can create beat-patterned vibration. Furthermore, we can create normal vibration with the proposed ETB module by applying same frequency to the two electrodes. Experiments were conducted to validate the haptic performance of the proposed prototype. The results show that the proposed ETB module can create not only beat-patterned vibration but also normal vibration. The results also show that it can generate strong enough vibration to stimulate mechanoreceptors in wide frequency ranges.