Position controlled pneumatic tactile display for tangential stimulation of a finger pad

•A tangential tactile display for a human finger has been implemented.•The display is integrated with a thin capacitive position sensor.•The hysteresis problem was solved by the feedback control of the position.•The achieved control resolution was 0.12 mm, smaller than human perception limit.

This paper presents the design and implementation of a pneumatic tactile display with a Flexible Printed Circuit Board (FPCB) based capacitive position sensor integrated for precise position control. The proposed tactile display was designed to stimulate human finger in tangential direction. The size of the fabricated display was 18 mm × 18 mm × 20 mm. The position control range was 2.5 mm for each x and y axis. The resolution of position control was estimated from three repeated experiments as 0.12 mm with feedback control. The hysteresis behavior of the proposed display observed before feedback control has been eliminated.