Cable-Driven Haptic Interface With Movable Bases Achieving Maximum Workspace and Isotropic Force Exertion

Haptic interactions play an essential role in education to enhance learning efficiency; however, haptic information for virtual educational content remains lacking. This article proposes a planar cable-driven haptic interface with movable bases that can display isotropic force feedback with maximum workspace extension on a commercial screen display. A generalized kinematic and static analysis of the cable-driven mechanism is derived by considering movable pulleys. Based on the analyses, a system including movable bases is designed and controlled to maximize the workspace subject to isotropic force exertion for the target screen area. The proposed system is evaluated experimentally as a haptic interface represented by the workspace, isotropic force-feedback range, bandwidth, Z-width, and user experiment. The results indicate that the proposed system can maximize workspace to the target rectangular area and exert isotropic force up to 94.0% of the theoretical computed one within the workspace.