Haptic Paddle USB Interface
Zach Stigglebout and Hawkeye King
2009-2012
Background
The Haptic Paddle is a low cost educational haptic device developed in the late 1990s at Stanford University by Mark Cutkosky, Jesse Dorogusker, Christopher Richard, and Allison Okamura as a simple force-feedback display which was both inexpensive and durable. It was later improved upon by Johns Hopkins University, and has finally made its way to the University of Washington. The goal of our work here at the UW was to transform the electronics from an old analog design using the "legacy" printer port, to a more mordern digital design, centered around a microprocessor with USB capability. We believe this modernized haptic paddle can be an invaluable tool for instruction in robotics, haptics, control systems, and embedded design courses.
Design
The Haptic Paddle was originally designed as an analog device with a parallel port interface to a PC. It has been redesigned to interface with the PC using USB, see the high level block diagram below.
The paddle communicates with the PC using a Cypress microcontroller over USB. It sends the current paddle position as read by the hall effect sensor to the PC, which performs some computation, and returns a motor output value. This value is then translated to a PWM signal which is used to drive the motor via an H-Bridge IC.
Construction
This section details the parts you need, and how to build your own haptic paddle. Shown below is a schematic and board layout for the PCB used to interface your paddle and PC.
Here is a link to a PDF detailing the electronic parts used in the construction of the above PCB.
Downloads
Here are some other important files, packaged as .zip.
Eagle schematics and board layout: HapticPaddleEagle.zip
Drivers and software: Paddler.zip
Quick Start: Getting Started Guide
Links
And here are the links to previous work involving the haptic paddle. Use these for mechanical construction concerns.
Getting Started
Once you have constructed your own haptic paddle mechanism and the PCB to control it, follow these set of instructions to install the drivers, and run a sample program. For more information on modifying drivers, firmware, and software, please see the following section.
