Autogrip: Enabling Force Feedback Devices to Self-Attach to End-Users' Fingers

Autogrip is a new thimble that enables force feedback devices to autonomously attach themselves to a finger. Although self-attachment is a simple concept, it has never been explored in the space of force feedback devices where current thimble solutions require complex attachment procedures and often swapping between interchangeable parts. Self-attachment is advantageous in many applications such as: immersive spaces, multi-user, walk up and use contexts, and especially multi-point force feedback systems as it can allow a lone user to quickly attach multiple devices to fingers on both hands - a difficult task with current thimbles. We present the design of our open-source contraption, Autogrip, a one-size-fits-all thimble that retro-fits to existing force feedback devices, enabling them to automatically attach themselves to a fingertip. We demonstrate Autogrip by retrofitting it to a Phantom 1.5 and a 4-finger Mantis system. We report preliminary user-testing results that indicated Autogrip was three times faster to attach than a typical method. We also present further refinements based on user feedback.