Feeling is Believing: Using a Force-Feedback Joystick to Teach Dynamic Systems

As an innovative approach to teaching the laboratory component of an undergraduate course on dynamic systems, we present the haptic paddle: a low-cost, single-axis, force-feedback joystick. Using the paddle, students not only learned to model and analyze dynamic systems, but by using their sense of touch, they were able to feel the effects of phenomena such as viscous damping, stiffness, and inertia. Feeling the dynamics, in addition to learning the underlying physics, improved students’ understanding and added an element of fun to the course. In this paper, we describe the purpose and design of the haptic paddle, present examples of how the paddle was integrated into laboratory exercises, and show the results of student evaluations.