Spatial haptics is a transducer-based system, developed with the fabulous Robin Thorn, for some upcoming research at Bristol University.
The system is an array of 16 haptic vibration transducers, each with a force sensor, controlled by a custom circuit and with purpose-built spatialiser software. The array of transducers allows the user to feel the sensation of the vibration moving around under their hand, quite like a low-resolution screen that you can feel rather than see. The force sensors add feedback and measurement to the system.
My role was to design and create the physical aspects of the project, the housings and the base plates.
Inside each of these little 3D-printed towers is mounted one haptic transducer, a small PCB and a force-sensitive resistor.
The 16 towers are then mounted into a flexible base plate. While custom baseplates (left) allow bespoke speaker positioning .
These are connected to this bespoke driver board, which has audio outputs for driving 16 transducers and inputs for each of the force sensors.
The Driver board is controlled using purpose-written Spatialiser software. This has a scripting language for creating custom spatial patterns & transducer layouts. It features a visualizer that enables users to monitor the system’s activity in real-time.
For more details, please see Robin’s page about the project.
