Dynamic Brake Control for a Wearable Impulsive Force Display by a String and a Brake System

In recent years, it has become possible to experience sports in the virtual reality (VR) space. Although many haptic displays in the VR environment currently use vibrators as the mainstream, the vibrators’ presentation is not suitable to express ball-receiving in the VR sports experience. Therefore, we have developed a novel haptic display that reproduces an impulsive force by instantaneously applying traction to the palm using a string and wearable brake system. This paper proposes a method to present various reaction forces by dynamic control of the braking system and report the quantitative evaluation of the device’s physical and psychological usability.

Identification of Words and Phrases Through a Phonemic-Based Haptic Display

Stand-alone devices for tactile speech reception serve a need as communication aids for persons with profound sensory impairments as well as in applications such as human-computer interfaces and remote communication when the normal auditory and visual channels are compromised or overloaded. The current research is concerned with perceptual evaluations of a phoneme-based tactile speech communication device in which a unique tactile code was assigned to each of the 24 consonants and 15 vowels of English. The tactile phonemic display was conveyed through an array of 24 tactors that stimulated the dorsal and ventral surfaces of the forearm. Experiments examined the recognition of individual words as a function of the inter-phoneme interval (Study 1) and two-word phrases as a function of the inter-word interval (Study 2). Following an average training period of 4.3 hrs on phoneme and word recognition tasks, mean scores for the recognition of individual words in Study 1 ranged from 87.7% correct to 74.3% correct as the inter-phoneme interval decreased from 300 to 0 ms. In Study 2, following an average of 2.5 hours of training on the two-word phrase task, both words in the phrase were identified with an accuracy of 75% correct using an inter-word interval of 1 sec and an inter-phoneme interval of 150 ms. Effective transmission rates achieved on this task were estimated to be on the order of 30 to 35 words/min.

When Nature Enhances Play in Nature: ListenTree

While digital and virtual play offer many advantages, our devices compress a wealth of information into displays that make use of a very limited subset of our sensorimotor capabilities. Meanwhile, nature play has been largely praised for being an ideal environment where we can use all our senses. Integrating computing power into the environment allows us to embed information into the material of the world, opening new opportunities for grounded networked play. This article proposes that the integration of information in the natural and built environment can take on a new meaning when paired with social mechanisms, cultural value and symbolic meaning. ListenTree, an audio-haptic display embedded in a tree is discussed as an example of a new form of display in the natural environment. An audio exciter transducer is weatherproofed and attached to the underground portion of a tree trunk, transforming the tree into a living speaker that channels audio through its branches. Our intervention is motivated by a need for seamless displays that support curiosity-driven exploration and require us to be present, attentive, and mindful.