AN ANALYSIS OF STATIC, DYNAMIC, AND APPARENT MOTION VIBROTACTILE STIMULI

The sense of touch is uniquely suited for displaying certain types of information, such as navigation instructions and high-level messaging. As part of a line of research in developing a vibrotactile communication system to support person-to-person tactile messaging over a network, the present study examines the effectiveness and efficiency of three different vibrotactile signal presentation methods for communicating a spatial pattern. In an evaluation study, participants identified static (one or multiple locations vibrating at once), non-overlapping dynamic sequences of presentations, and saltatory presentations which induce the “apparent motion” tactile illusion; each at increasing levels of signal complexity and presentation duration. The equipment used for the interface devices consists of two Engineering Acoustics, Inc. solenoid tactor systems and a computer interface developed in C++. The results of the study suggest that both response time and accuracy are strongly dependent on the complexity of the signal and the presentation method utilized, with static and saltatory presentations outperforming dynamic presentations. With more complex signals, the relative benefit of saltatory presentations appears to increase. These results have implications for the design of tactile display signals of varying degrees of complexity, and will inform the continued development of the CHIAD (Creative Haptic Interaction At-a-Distance) system