Haptic Microscopy: Tactile Perception of Small Scales

Over three PhD theses co-supervised with Vincent Hayward, we developed a technique to scale up microscale force interactions to a user's hand with near-perfect linear amplification. While this challenge could be approached through robotic teleoperation - using a precise robot manipulator with force sensing controlled via a haptic device - the required bilateral coupling between different physical scales demands extremely large homothetic gains (typically ×10 000 to ×100 000) in both displacement and force. These large gains compromise transparency, as device imperfections and stability requirements mask the faithful perception of microscale phenomena. To overcome this limitation, we developed the concept of haptic microscopy. We designed a complete microscale teleoperation system from the ground up, featuring a custom robotic manipulator and novel haptic device, implementing direct bilateral coupling with pure gains. This electromechanical system successfully amplifies microscale forces several thousand times, enabling operators to better understand the physical landscape they are manipulating. Our paper details the design process for both the microtool and haptic device, and presents experiments demonstrating users' ability to tactilely explore microscale interactions.