Engineering Electromechanical Actuators for Vibrotactile

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Interns

Lavinna Wu - Computer Engineering

Luke Herbelin - Computer Science

Joaquin D. Lazaro - Statistics and Data Science

Aneri Shah - Electrical Engineering

Project Description

In everyday life, physical sensations, such as a phone buzzing, are produced by haptic technology. Vibrotactile actuators, a type of haptic technology, use vibrations to help people with visual and auditory impairments navigate their surroundings and modern-day devices. However, haptic technology is not accessible to everyone; around 20-30 million people in the US suffer from sensory limitations in touch. To address this challenge, actuators are being designed to deliver stronger and more power-efficient vibration feedback to users. This presentation reports efforts on the fabrication of four different actuator models varying in spring dimensions, mass, or magnet size. The models were tested using lasers to measure their resonant frequency. It was observed that two actuators, which varied in spring dimensions, exhibited greater vibration strength than the baseline model and had a resonant frequency of about 200 hertz, the frequency to which humans are most sensitive. The actuator with a longer spring was identified as having the best vibration strength-to-power ratio. Lastly, the perceptual study found that the model with a longer spring used less power to achieve the same output as the baseline model. It was determined that the actuator with the longer spring most effectively targeted 200 Hz and optimized the vibration strength-to-power ratio. Future studies aim to incorporate the different aspects of each model to achieve greater power efficiency and make haptic technology more accessible to those with sensory limitations.