In this paper, we present a new haptic interface, called "active skin", which is configured with a tactile sensor
and a tactile stimulator in single haptic cell, and multiple haptic cells are embedded in a dielectric elastomer.
The active skin generates a wide variety of haptic feel in response to the touch by synchronizing the sensor and
the stimulator. In this paper, the design of the haptic cell is derived via iterative analysis and design procedures.
A fabrication method dedicated to the proposed device is investigated and a controller to drive multiple haptic
cells is developed. In addition, several experiments are performed to evaluate the performance of the active skin.
As a major human sensory function, the implementation of the tactile sensation for the human-machine interface
has been one of the core research interests for long time. In this research, tactile display devices based on
dielectric elastomer are introduced among the works recently done by ourselves. Using dielectric elastomer for
the construction of the tactile interface, it can provide stimulation on the human skin without any additional
electromechanical transmission. Softness and flexibility of the device structure, ease of fabrication, possibility for
miniaturization, and cost effectiveness are the representative benefits of the presented devices. Especially, the
device application is open to a wide variety of purposes since the flexible structure offers excellent adaptability
to any contour of the human body as well as the other objects. In this paper, the design of the interfaces is
briefly explained and several examples of implementation are introduced.
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