HamsaTouch: Tactile Vision Substitution with Smartphone and Electro-Tactile Display

This paper documents the development and evaluation of a novel tactile vision substitution system (TVSS) for the people with visual impairments. The system is composed of an electro-tactile display with 512 electrodes, the same number of optical sensors beneath each electrode, and a smartphone with a camera and an LCD. The smartphone acquires the surrounding view, conducts image processing and displays the image on the LCD. The image is captured by the optical sensors and converted to a tactile image by the electro-tactile display. While the concept of the TVSS is classic, combining the commonly available mobile device and electro-tactile display enables a low cost yet powerful and compact system. Furthermore, optical communication architecture enables an open development environment. Author Keywords electro-tactile display, optical communication, reading aid, smartphone, tactile vision substitution system, visually impaired ACM Classification Keywords H5.2 [Information interfaces and presentation]: Use