Compensating for Fingertip Size to Render Tactile Cues More Accurately Fingertip haptic feedback offers advantages in many applications , including robotic teleoperation, gaming, and training. However, fingertip size and shape vary significantly across humans, making it difficult to design fingertip interfaces and rendering techniques suitable for everyone. This paper starts with an existing datadriven haptic rendering algorithm that ignores fingertip size, and it then develops two softwarebased approaches to personalize this algorithm for fingertips of different sizes using either additional data or geometry. We evaluate our algorithms in the rendering of prerecorded tactile sensations onto rubber casts of six different fingertips as well as onto the real fingertips of 13 human participants. Results on the casts show that both approaches significantly improve performance, reducing force error magnitudes by an average of 78% with respect to the standard nonpersonalized rendering technique. Congruent results were obtained for real fingertips, with subjects rating each of the two personalized rendering techniques significantly better than the standard nonpersonalized method.

HumanRobot Interaction Through Fingertip Haptic Devices for Cooperative Manipulation Tasks Teleoperation of multirobot systems, e.g. dual manipulators, in cooperative manipulation tasks requires haptic feedback of multicontact interaction forces. Classical haptic devices restrict the workspace of the human operator and provide only one contact point. An alternative solution is to enable the operator to command the robot system via freehand motions which extends the workspace of the human. In such a setting, a multicontact haptic feedback may be provided to the human through multiple wearable haptic devices, e.g. fingertip devices that display forces on the human fingertips. In this paper we evaluate the benefit of using wearable haptic fingertip devices to interact with a bimanual robot setup in a pickandplace manipulation task. We show that haptic feedback through wearable devices improves task performance compared to the base condition of no haptic feedback. Therefore, wearable haptic devices are a promising interface for guidance of multirobot manipulation systems.