In order to explore the potential to communicate through novel tactual displays, a multi-finger positional display (the TactuatorT) that is capable of simultaneously stimulating kinesthetic and vibrotactile senses has been developed. It can deliver arbitrary waveforms within an amplitude range from absolute detection threshold to about 50 dB sensation level, and a frequency range from near DC to above 300 Hz (e.g., 25 mm slow motion with superimposed high-frequency vibration).
The information transmission capabilities with the Tactuator were assessed through a series of absolute identification experiments with human observers. Multi-component stimuli were formed by simultaneously stimulating multiple fingers with waveforms containing sinusoids (varying in both frequency and amplitude) from three perceptually distinct frequency regions. Information transfer varied from 6.5 bits to 5.6 bits when signal duration decreased from 500 to 125 msec. Estimated information transfer rate was about 12 bits/sec, roughly comparable to that achieved by Tadoma users in tactual speech communication. These results are the best that have been obtained with artificial tactual displays of any kind. In addition to the above work, several important issues that are closely related to this research and warrant further investigation were identified: selection of stimulus uncertainty for maximizing information transfer, definition of stimulus-set dimensionality, and relationship between motor output and reception of motion sequences.
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Modified: Jun 25, 1997|
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