HapCompass: A Rotational Haptic Device for Contact-Rich Robotic Teleoperation

Xiangshan Tan¹, Jingtian Ji¹, Tianchong Jiang¹, Pedro Lopes², Matthew R. Walter¹

¹Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago (TTIC), ²University of Chicago

ICRA 2026

Project Page | Paper | Hardware

Overview

HapCompass is a wearable haptic device for contact-rich robotic teleoperation that renders 2D directional cues by mechanically rotating a single linear resonant actuator (LRA), whose asymmetric vibration provides directional haptic feedback. By mapping the robot's tactile measurements into directional feedback for the operator, it improves teleoperation performance on contact-rich tasks and leads to higher-quality demonstrations for imitation learning.

TODO

Webpage

• Build the project webpage (Mar 11)
• Upload a policy rollout video
• Add an arXiv link (Apr 1)

Hardware

• Upload the Fusion source design and STL files (Mar 31)
• Write BOM (Mar 31)
• Write assembly instructions (Apr 1)
• Write "Modifying Source Design"

Software

• Upload the code for device control
• Upload the code for tactile mapping
• Upload the code for teleoperation

Hardware

Bill of materials (BOM), assembly instructions, editable source design (.f3z), and printable parts (.stl) can be found in the hardware/ directory.

BibTeX

@inproceedings{tan2026hapcompass,
  author    = {Tan, Xiangshan and Ji, Jingtian and Jiang, Tianchong and Lopes, Pedro and Walter, Matthew R.},
  title     = {HapCompass: A Rotational Haptic Device for Contact-Rich Robotic Teleoperation},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA)},
  year      = {2026},
}