Farimah Fazlollahi
Ph.D. Student
Stuttgart
Advisor(s):
Katherine Kuchenbecker
Farimah received her BSc and MSc degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Shiraz University in 2014 and 2017. She is now a Ph.D. researcher in the Haptic Intelligence Department at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems. She is interested in haptics, robotics, dynamics, mechanism design, and sensor fusion.
Haptify: A Measurement-Based Benchmarking System for Grounded Force-Feedback Devices
Grounded force-feedback (GFF) devices are an established and diverse class of haptic technology based on robotic arms. However, the number of designs and how they are specified make comparing devices difficult. We thus present Haptify, a benchmarking system that can thoroughly, fairly, and noninvasively evaluate GFF haptic devices. The user holds the instrumented device end-effector and moves it through a series of passive and active experiments. Haptify records the interaction between the hand, device, and ground with a seven-camera optical motion-capture system, a 60-cm-square custom force plate, and a customized sensing end-effector. We demonstrate six key ways to assess GFF device performance: workspace shape, global free-space forces, global free-space vibrations, local dynamic forces and torques, frictionless surface rendering, and stiffness rendering. We then use Haptify to benchmark two commercial haptic devices. With a smaller workspace than the 3D Systems Touch, the more expensive Touch X outputs smaller free-space forces and vibrations, smaller and more predictable dynamic forces and torques, and higher-quality renderings of a frictionless surface and high stiffness.