Ubi-Pen: A Haptic Interface with Texture and Vibrotactile Display
Ki-Uk Kyung and Jun-Young Lee
IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications
Vol. 29 (1), 24-32, 2009.01 (Selected as a Feature Article.)

We've developed a compact tactile-display module, which we've embedded in a pen-type haptic interface providing vibration and distributed pressure. We call the resulting system the Ubi-Pen. It can represent tactile patterns and provide feedback with the click of a button. It’s also applicable to combined force- and tactilefeedback display.
To determine the Ubi-Pen’s effectiveness, we tested its pattern display and its ability to provide a realistic clicking sensation. One of the most frequent complaints about touch screens is that users are unsure whether tapping the screen successfully pressed a button. To address this issue, researchers have proposed a touch screen that provides active touch feedback. The Ubi-Pen produces a click-like sensation differently. In the second experiment, we used three different stimulation frequencies to investigate the temporal effects on pattern recognition. In addition, the Ubi-Pen is attached to a Phantom Omni for combination of tactile and force feedback interaction. To test the system, we designed the virtual environment. The virtual object is a 75 × 67.5 mm box whose stiffness is 2 kN/m. The box's upper surface has a texture derived from texture-mapping an image. Over all the tests, the haptic device combined with the built-in compact tactile display showed satisfactory results. Vibration feedback was also reasonably effective in texture display with force feedback.
 

Remark: The research in this paper has been accomplished ahead of the research papers in 'Journal of Biomedicine and Biotechnology' published in January 2008 and in 'Proceedings of SIGGRAPH 2008' published in August 2008. The haptic styli's names are Ubi-Pen in the IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, Ubi-Pen II in the Journal of Biomedicine and Biotechnoogy, and wUbi-Pen in the SIGGRAPH Proceedings respectively. Due to publication delay of IEEE CG&A, this reversed order of publication happened.