Final Remarks on the Design of Haptic Systems

Like any other design process the design of haptic systems is largely influenced by the optimization of a technical system based on the balancing of a plurality of decisions on separate components, which, as a rule, influence each other. In the beginning, the requirements of the customer respectively of the project have to be defined. The methods presented in chapter 6 are intended to systematically identify the most important aspects of these requirements. However, the engineer should be conscious of the fact that for the design of a sense-related interface less precise and definite terms are available than he may be used to. Additionally, the knowledge on the part of the customer may result in considerable confusion, as especially haptic terms like, e.g., resolution or dynamics may be used in the wrong context or understood in a wrong way. A better definition of the requirements without major misunderstandings is achieved by e.g. giving the customer aids, “shows-and-tells” of haptics. It is necessary for the customer and the engineer to come to a common understanding based on references known to both.