Haptic Ankle Platform for Interactive Walking in Virtual Reality.

This article presents an impedance type ankle haptic interface for providing users with an immersive navigation experience in virtual reality (VR). The ankle platform, actuated by an electric motor with feedback control, enables the use of foot-tapping gestures to create a walking experience like a real one and to haptically render different types of walking terrains. Experimental studies demonstrated that the interface can be easily used to generate virtual walking and is capable of rendering terrains, such as hard and soft surfaces, and multi-layer complex dynamic terrains. The designed system is a seated-type VR locomotion interface, therefore allowing its user to maintain a stable seated posture to comfortably navigate a virtual scene.

Physical Human-Robot Interaction Using HandsOn-SEA: An Educational Robotic Platform With Series Elastic Actuation.

For gaining proficiency in physical human-robot interactions, it is crucial for engineering students to be provided with the opportunity to gain hands-on experience with robotic devices that feature kinesthetic feedback. In this article, we propose HandsOn-SEA, a low-cost, single degree-of-freedom, force-controlled educational robot with series elastic actuation and introduce educational modules for the use of the device to allow students to experience the fundamental performance trade-offs inherent in robotic systems. The novelty of the proposed robot is due to the deliberate introduction of a compliant element between the actuator and the handle, whose deflections are measured to perform closed-loop force control. As an admittance-type robot, HandsOn-SEA relies on force feedback to achieve the desired level of safety and transparency and complements the existing impedance-type educational robots. We present the integration of HandsOn-SEA into the robotics curriculum, by providing guidelines for its use in a senior level robotics course, to help students experience the challenges involved in the synergistic design and control of robotic devices. We systematically evaluate the efficacy of the device in a robotics course delivered for five semesters and provide evidence that HandsOn-SEA is effective in instilling fundamental concepts and trade-offs in the design and control of robotic devices.