Preliminary Performance Assessment of Hardware Architecture for Affordable Haptics

Most commercially available haptic devices come with high prices, often exceeding 10,000. The recent advent of the design paradigm employing BLDC motors with low ratio transmission and high-frequency current control for quasi-direct drive actuation has seen numerous implementations in robots requiring torque control. Building on this concept, this paper reports on preliminary tests assessing the feasibility of utilizing mjbots hardware for creating affordable haptic devices, with a focus on affordability (total cost below 200), ease of use, and customization.