AbstractIn this paper, we propose an active indicator for figure recognition by haptics. It is a finger guiding system that tries to improve the accuracy and the speed of the haptic recognition. Ordinary haptic indicator systems are considered to represent passively the accurate figure, but are not considered accuracy and speed of recognition. The proposed method is not only passively but also actively indicating the figure to improve them. We designed an actual active indicator to compare three methods: an active guiding method, a passive guiding method and a hybrid of active and passive guiding method. As a result, a hybrid-guiding method, that has a complex but a flexible representation, is better for skilled persons, and an active-guiding method, that has a simple representation, is better for un-skilled persons.