HaPouch: Soft and Wearable Haptic Display Devices using Liquid-to-gas Phase Change Actuator

Conventional pneumatic haptic displays need a complex and weight system because air is fed through a tube from an air compressor. To address this problem, we propose a haptic display that uses a liquid-to-gas phase change actuator and Peltier device. The actuator is composed of a thin plastic pouch containing a low boiling point liquid. The temperature of the liquid is controlled by a Peltier device in close contact with an actuator. This approach allows soft actuators to be inflated without the use of a compressor and tubes, allowing us to realize a small and light haptic display. We implemented the haptic display that has a pouch of 10 mm square and evaluated the characteristics of it. We confirmed that the maximum output force reached almost 1.5 N, which is a similar level to off-the-shelf wearable haptic display.