3‐D Tactile Image Display

Much of the work on teleoperation has concentrated on active force and torque feedback between the slave device carrying out the required physical function and the master controller being guided by human hands. This gives the operator a feeling of resistance or damped acceleration when obstacles are encountered or large masses lifted. However, little idea of an object's physical outline or profile can be portrayed by these techniques, and such systems must be augmented by additional vision facilities. Similarly, the aerospace industry is presently developing ever increasingly sophisticated virtual reality environments for pilot training. It is felt that, in addition to visual, audio and torque feedback, some form of tactile feedback would be useful.