A film-type vibrotactile actuator for hand-held devices

Vibrotactile actuators for small consumer electronic products, such as mobile devices, have been widely used for conveying haptic sensation to users. One of the most important things in vibrotactile actuators is to be developed in the form of thin actuator which can be easily embedded into mobile devices and to provide vibrotactile signals with wide frequency band to users. Thus, this paper proposes a thin film type haptic actuator with an aim to convey vibrotactile information with high frequency bandwidth to users in mobile devices. To this end, a vibrotactile actuator which creates haptic sensation is designed and constructed based on cellulose acetate material. A cellulose acetate material charged with an electric potential can generate vibration under the AC voltage input. It is found that the motion of the actuator can have concave or convex shape by controlling a polarity of both charged membranes and the actuator performance can be modulated by increasing level of biased electric potential. The experiment clearly shows that the proposed actuator creates enough output force to stimulate human skin with a large frequency bandwidth and to simulate various vibrotactile sensations to users.