LinkRing: A Wearable Haptic Display for Delivering Multi-contact and Multi-modal Stimuli at the Finger Pads

LinkRing is a novel wearable tactile display for providing multi-contact and multi-modal stimuli at the finger. The system of two five-bar linkage mechanisms is designed to operate with two independent contact points, which combined can provide such stimulation as shear force and twist stimuli, slippage, and pressure. The proposed display has a lightweight and easy to wear structure. Two experiments were carried out in order to determine the sensitivity of the finger surface, the first one aimed to determine the location of the contact points, and the other for discrimination the slippage with varying rates. The results of the experiments showed a high level of pattern recognition.