Information Transfer to a Hand-Held Container Using Virtual Vibrotactile Motion

초록

The present study proposes a novel method to provide information via a hand-held container, such as a cup, to a user's hand, using virtual vibrotactile motion. Although container information can be conveyed visually or auditorily, these modalities may be unreliable in noisy or reflective environments. Tactile feedback - particularly virtual vibrotactile cues - offers a practical alternative for delivering rich information in such conditions. This study demonstrates the feasibility of using virtual vibrotactile feedback to convey container information. The virtual vibrotactile motion is rendered by utilizing illusory haptic effects to create the sensation of a virtual vibrotactile actuator moving along a pre-designed path. We built a system that can provide material information inside the hand-held container by modulating virtual vibrotactile paths. The system includes a haptic interface to be worn around a container. We optimized the actuator layout for the haptic interface and the virtual vibrotactile motion patterns in two experiments. In Experiment 1, two physical actuator layouts, $3\times 3$ and $3\times 2$ , were tested with eight virtual vibrotactile motions. The results indicate no significant difference in information transfer between the two layouts and significantly higher percent correct scores for repeated virtual vibrotactile motion than the non-repeated ones. Experiment 2 tested how well information on liquid level and temperature could be transferred with an optimized physical actuator layout and virtual vibrotactile motion. The mean percent correct scores for all virtual vibrotactile motions, temperature, and liquid levels were 80.28, 87.96, and 89.72%, respectively, which are larger than the target signal identification accuracy of 80%.

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