Haptic Human Computer Interfaces

BRIEF

‘through evidence based extrapolation, produce a series of designs with validating experiments that explore how humans will interact with a key piece of technology of your choosing.’

March 2020

SKILLS

This project was completed as a group. I headed the design and implementation of a series of electrotactile experiments with the BioEngineering dept., performed the casing design for the vibrotactile experiments, created the promotional video and headed the graphic design of the portfolio.

area

We are capable of understanding a huge amount of information through our skin. From a craftsman’s hands to the fingers of a violinist, there are thousands of examples of how we can extract incredible complex information from this ocean of data. However, perhaps more impressive are the millions of people worldwide who use this tactile sense to replace one which they have lost. Sensory substitution allows the blind to read through bumps on a page, see with their back and locate objects with their tongue. Through technology, we can learn to understand tactile data in incredible ways.

The skin is a set of complex sensors, wired directly to our brain. What if we could control the messages it recieved?

future direction

Sensory substitution immediately opens up the prospect of sensory addition; taking healthy individuals and training their brains to understand seemingly abstract haptic data through their skin. What if surgeons could understand complex patient readouts by feeling them? What if pilots could understand the state of their plane through their skin? What if we could interact with our smart phones without having it occupy our whole field of attention?

our work

This project explored how long it would take someone to learn a simple vibrotactile language through their skin. We created a training program linked to three vibrotactile motors and a haptic language that represented the numbers 0-9. Combining these numbers allowed us to build a haptic watch.

Using this simple prototype, I was able to effectively teach myself how to tell the time through my skin.

The aspiration of this concept was that continuous use would allow the user to attain a constant “sense” of time, as opposed to having to check. These simple prototypes proved the vision of haptic devices, and opens the question of how much data could we understand through our skin?

Our project expanded beyond the common use of vibrotactile (VT) signals, and explored the use of electrotactile (ET) signals. This uses mild electric impulses on the surface of the skin to elicit a tactile sensation. The huge advantages of ET over VT, is the compactness of the wearable (which could technically be paper thin) and the much closer proximity of the actuators (making the wearable cover a smaller skin surface area).