Tongue-operated joystick device with reaction force feedback mechanism

Abstract

This paper presents a novel tongue-operated joystick device for severely disabled persons. The human tongue can generate varied movements and has superior tactile sensations. The utilization of tactile sensation enables humans to interactively communicate with life support equipment, such as powered wheel chair and robotic manipulators and to control them skillfully and safely. In this study, the ability and characteristics of the human tongue as both a motile and tactile organ were analyzed. Based on these analyses, a new joystick device with a simple mechanism that utilizes feedback reaction force was designed. In this device, an elastic plate was used as a contact tip of the joystick to provide a reaction force to the user through tactile sensation. The reaction force was controlled by adjusting the effective length of the plate with a slider-crank mechanism. In this paper, functionalities of the tongue, as well as the proposed joystick device, are described in detail.