HapCompass: A Rotational Haptic Device for Contact-Rich Robotic Teleoperation
2026-03-31 • Robotics
RoboticsHuman-Computer Interaction
AI summaryⓘ
The authors created HapCompass, a simple wearable device that helps people control robots by giving clear directional touch signals. Unlike usual vibrating controllers that don't show direction well, HapCompass spins a small part to point out directions. Tests showed that using HapCompass helped people complete robot tasks faster, with less force, and more successfully than just using vision or regular vibrations. They also found it can improve robot learning by providing better example data. The authors shared their device design and software online for others to use.
robotic teleoperationhaptic feedbackwearable devicevibrotactile actuatorlinear resonant actuatordirectional cuescontact-rich tasksimitation learningmanipulationforce feedback
Authors
Xiangshan Tan, Jingtian Ji, Tianchong Jiang, Pedro Lopes, Matthew R. Walter
Abstract
The contact-rich nature of manipulation makes it a significant challenge for robotic teleoperation. While haptic feedback is critical for contact-rich tasks, providing intuitive directional cues within wearable teleoperation interfaces remains a bottleneck. Existing solutions, such as non-directional vibrations from handheld controllers, provide limited information, while vibrotactile arrays are prone to perceptual interference. To address these limitations, we propose HapCompass, a novel, low-cost wearable haptic device that renders 2D directional cues by mechanically rotating a single linear resonant actuator (LRA). We evaluated HapCompass's ability to convey directional cues to human operators and showed that it increased the success rate, decreased the completion time and the maximum contact force for teleoperated manipulation tasks when compared to vision-only and non-directional feedback baselines. Furthermore, we conducted a preliminary imitation-learning evaluation, suggesting that the directional feedback provided by HapCompass enhances the quality of demonstration data and, in turn, the trained policy. We release the design of the HapCompass device along with the code that implements our teleoperation interface: https://ripl.github.io/HapCompass/.