Wavy Silicone Rubber Based Flexible Vibrotactile Actuator

A flexible vibrotactile actuator based on a wavy shaped silicone rubber has been proposed. The proposed actuator consists of the wavy silicone rubber sandwiched between upper and lower thin electrode layers. When the AC signal is applied to the proposed actuator, the actuator generates vibration by the attractive electrostatic force and the elastic restoring force. In this work, we evaluate the frequency response of the proposed vibrotactile actuator through a quantitative experiment. The maximum acceleration is observed as 0.728g at a frequency of 128 Hz and at an amplitude of 2.5 kV/mm. Furthermore, the accelerations by varying the applied electric field are measured at the resonance frequency. The experimental results show that the proposed actuator can be used in next-generation wearable devices.