Fingeret: A Wearable Fingerpad-Free Haptic Device for Mixed Reality

Haptic feedback to fingers is essential for enhancing the experience of human-computer interactions. In mixed-reality (MR) environments, haptic feedback to fingers should be achieved without covering the fingerpad because seamless interactions with both physical and virtual objects are required. However, previous haptic devices cannot provide a wide range of haptic feedback without interfering with physical interactions. Here, we propose a novel self-contained fingerpad-free haptic device named Fingeret, which enables a wide range of feedback and seamless interactions in MR environments. Specifically, we combined newly developed actuators for the sides of fingers, hereafter named finger side actuators (FSAs), with a conventional fingernail actuator (FNA) to obtain a wide range of haptic feedback. FSAs are suitable for relatively low-frequency haptic feedback, whereas FNA is suitable for relatively high-frequency haptic feedback. Our user study showed that the two actuators have complementary roles in covering a wide range of haptic feedback. Finally, we demonstrated an application scenario for designing molecules using an MR tool using Fingeret.