Abstract
This paper describes the development of a tactile presentation system mounted on a mouse. Since human tactile receptors are distributed on entire fingertip surface, the matrix typed tactile presentation device is essential for the virtual reality caused by tactile sensation. In this paper, a tactile presentation system was designed using piezoelectric ceramic actuators for pressure stimulator because they can control precise displacement. The key part of the system, a Braille cell presenting Braille dots, was an array of eight PZT ceramic actuators (displacement of a PZT ceramic actuator is 1 mm/200 V). Three braille cells were mounted on a mouse to generate distributed pressure with 4-by-6 stimulating points. In order to examine the basic size of texture that the present device displays, the experiment was done from 10.8mm to 104.9mm of texture. It was found out that if size of basic figures exceeds 26mm then human subjects could recognize the figures with high percentage of correct answers being more than 80 percent of correct.
