Bristol Interaction Group

Force Attraction Pen: A Haptic Pen with Variable Attraction Force

2016. James Burnside, Ben Elgar, Sam Healer, Alexander Hill, Zac Ioannidis, Luke Mitchell, Paul Worgan & Anne Roudaut
CHI EA '16: Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems

We present the Force Attraction Pen, a haptic stylus that encourages the users to move in a particular direction by providing variable attraction force feedback based on their actions. The tip of the stylus is augmented with an electromagnet that can repel or attract the stylus to a metallic surface. By altering the polarity and voltage, we change the amount and direction of the force produced. The tactile expressions of the stylus may enable a higher grain of control during tasks such as tracing an image, performing selection, and other high precision tasks. In this paper we present the design and implementation of such a system, along with a formative study as a preliminary investigation into the haptic feedback generated by our system.

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Citation

Burnside, J., Elgar, B., Healer, S., Hill, A., Ioannidis, Z., Mitchell, L., … Roudaut, A. (2016). Force attraction pen: a haptic pen with variable attraction force. Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 2655–2660). New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery. URL: https://doi.org/10.1145/2851581.2892441, doi:10.1145/2851581.2892441

BibTeX

@inproceedings{10.1145/2851581.2892441,
author = {Burnside, James and Elgar, Ben and Healer, Sam and Hill, Alexander and Ioannidis, Zac and Mitchell, Luke and Worgan, Paul and Roudaut, Anne},
title = {Force Attraction Pen: A Haptic Pen with Variable Attraction Force},
year = {2016},
isbn = {9781450340823},
publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
address = {New York, NY, USA},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/2851581.2892441},
doi = {10.1145/2851581.2892441},
abstract = {We present the Force Attraction Pen, a haptic stylus that encourages the users to move in a particular direction by providing variable attraction force feedback based on their actions. The tip of the stylus is augmented with an electromagnet that can repel or attract the stylus to a metallic surface. By altering the polarity and voltage, we change the amount and direction of the force produced. The tactile expressions of the stylus may enable a higher grain of control during tasks such as tracing an image, performing selection, and other high precision tasks. In this paper we present the design and implementation of such a system, along with a formative study as a preliminary investigation into the haptic feedback generated by our system.},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems},
pages = {2655–2660},
numpages = {6},
keywords = {haptic pen, force feedback, electromagnet},
location = {San Jose, California, USA},
series = {CHI EA '16}
}