Haptic displays. How can we feel virtual environments?

Since Virtual Environments (VE) have facilitated new dimensions of human-computer-interaction, many applications have been realized. The drawback of these complex applications is the difficulty o control all interactions only visually. This report describes the interaction with an additional human perceptive channel: the haptic perceptive channel. Haptic means the tactile sense and the kinesthetic sense of force (the so calles force feedback). With haptic displays, or haptic devices, a user perceives computer-simulated forces or tactile information. Important aspects of human haptic perception based upon experiments are described. Furthermore, haptic displays, developed in research labs, and their applications will be illustrated.