Haptic cues (original) (raw)

Texture displays: a passive approach to tactile presentation

… of the 27th international conference on …, 2009

In this paper, we consider a passive approach to tactile presentation based on changing the surface textures of objects that might naturally be handled by a user. This may allow devices and other objects to convey small amounts of information in very unobtrusive ways and with little attention demand. This paper considers several possible uses for this style of display and explores implementation issues. We conclude with results from our user study, which indicate that users can detect upwards of four textural states accurately with even simple materials.

Haptic techniques for media control

Proceedings of the 14th annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology - UIST '01, 2001

We introduce a set of techniques for haptically manipulating digital media such as video, audio, voicemail and computer graphics, utilizing virtual mediating dynamic models based on intuitive physical metaphors. For example, a video sequence can be modeled by linking its motion to a heavy spinning virtual wheel: the user browses by grasping a physical force-feedback knob and engaging the virtual wheel through a simulated clutch to spin or brake it, while feeling the passage of individual frames. These systems were implemented on a collection of single axis actuated displays (knobs and sliders), equipped with orthogonal force sensing to enhance their expressive potential. We demonstrate how continuous interaction through a haptically actuated device rather than discrete button and key presses can produce simple yet powerful tools that leverage physical intuition.

Exploring Tactile Interface Aesthetics through Computational Media Design

2019

The tactile qualities of technology are often neglected by interaction designers who favour digital functionality, even though materiality plays a huge role in defining humans' surroundings. Multiple benefits emerge from tactile interfaces and this thesis concentrates on three of them: 1. tactile interfaces can communicate visual, emotional, or sensorial information when visual and hearing senses are already overloaded with information; 2. they can guide users' mobility through an environment, such as using hands to assist in walking through a dark room; and, 3. they can benefit computer-based applications for visually-impaired people. I focus on three themes – materiality, physical computing, and human touch behaviour – which I investigate through a collaborative project with four other design students. I conduct experime nts to explore three ways of using different tactile materials to create (computationally) interactive tactile interfaces (for example, Conductive Silicon...

Haptic Interaction Design for Everyday Interfaces

This chapter sets about to provide the background and orientation needed to set a novice designer on his or her way to bringing haptics successfully into an interactive product. To define appropriate roles for haptic interaction, it is necessary to integrate a basic awareness of human capabilities on one hand and current device technology on the other. Here, I explore this integration by first summarizing the most salient constraints imposed by both humans and hardware. I then proceed to relate perceptual, motor, and attentional capabilities to a selection of emerging application contexts chosen to be relevant to contemporary design trends and opportunities. These include abstract communication and notification, augmentation of graphical user interfaces, expressive control, affective communication, and mobile and handheld computing. Our touch (haptic) sense is such an integral part of our everyday experience that few of us really notice it. Notice it now, as you go about your business. Within and beneath our skin lie layers of ingenious and diverse tactile receptors comprising our tactile sensing subsystem. These receptors enable us to parse textures, assess temperature and material , guide dexterous manipulations, find a page's edge to turn it, and deduce a friend's mood from a touch of his hand. Intermingled with our muscle fibers and within our joints are load cells and position transducers making up our proprioceptive sense, which tell our nervous systems of a limb's position and motion and the resistance it encounters. Without these and their close integration with our body's motor control, it would be exceedingly difficult to break an egg neatly into a bowl, play a piano, walk without tripping, stroke a pet, write, draw, or even type. Touch is our earliest sense to develop (Montagu, 1986). It has evolved to work in a tight partnership with vision and hearing in many ways we are only beginning to understand, as we study processes (such as hand-eye coordination) and how we process conflicting or competing information from different senses. In stark contrast to the importance of touch in our everyday experience, the use of touch is marginalized in contemporary computer interfaces, overlooked in the rush to accommodate graphical capability in desktop-based systems. The primary advances have been in feel-focused improvements in nonactuated pointing tools for both function and aesthetics. Scroll wheels have been designed for the user to click with just the right resistance and frequency; and most cell phones now come with vibrators that indicate incoming calls. Meanwhile, the use of haptic feedback in the consumer sphere is largely limited to gaming, and tactile feedback to simple cell phone alerts.

Feeling bumps and holes without a haptic interface: the perception of pseudo-haptic textures

2004

We present a new interaction technique to simulate textures in desktop applications without a haptic interface. The proposed technique consists in modifying the motion of the cursor on the computer screen -i.e. the Control/Display ratio. Assuming that the image displayed on the screen corresponds to a top view of the texture, an acceleration (or deceleration) of the cursor indicates a negative (or positive) slope of the texture. Experimental evaluations showed that participants could successfully identify macroscopic textures such as bumps and holes, by simply using the variations of the motion of the cursor. Furthermore, the participants were able to draw the different profiles of bumps and holes which were simulated, correctly. These results suggest that our technique enabled the participants to successfully conjure a mental image of the topography of the macroscopic textures. Applications for this technique are: the feeling of images (pictures, drawings) or GUI components (windows' edges, buttons), the improvement of navigation, or the visualization of scientific data.

Designing with haptic feedback

Proceedings 2000 ICRA. Millennium Conference. IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation. Symposia Proceedings (Cat. No.00CH37065)

Haptic feedback is a design element for human-computer interfaces, and this paper discusses when and how it can be used to best effect in interactive applications. It begins with consideration of the unique attributes of the touch sense in physiological and psychological terms, and the nature of information and control that touching provides. It reviews where active touching helps, by setting forth the forms it may take and important parameters that describe it; and evaluates the specific benefits it offers to contemporary interface problems. It ends with a proposal for a simple interaction model that emphasizes holistic design principles, and highlights issues that arise in the process of creating specific haptic interfaces.

Foundations of Transparency in Tactile Information Design

IEEE Transactions on Haptics, 2008

This paper places contemporary literature on the topic of unimodal single-site display of information using complex tactile signals in the context of progress toward transparent communication-placing minimal load on the user's attentional resources. We discuss recent evidence that more is possible with purely haptic display than is commonly believed, as well as procedural developments that support systematic design of transparent tactile information display, and we frame the advances required to realize significant benefits with the technology we have now. Examples used and objectives thus identified focus on establishing effective information representations and outlining efficient tools and processes for perceptually guiding icon design. Our discussion is inspired by Weiser's vision of calm technology based on locatedness and seamless movement between the center and the periphery, and it is organized along the lines of potential utility, form, and learning. Index Terms-Haptic I/O, human information processing, input devices and strategies, user-centered design.

Haptics: for a more experiential quality in a computer interface

2003

Applied artists and product designers encounter difficulties in adapting to digital tools which could theoretically improve their practice. The Tacitus project has adopted user-centered methodologies to investigate the potential advantage offered by digital media, particularly during the germinal phase of the design process, by developing a novel interface which exploits spatial input, haptic force-feedback and stereovision. This paper presents theoretical implications and experimental results obtained from the first studies of an early prototype for sketching in three dimensions, with the focus on qualitative evaluation. The underlying principle of the 3D sketching 'widget' is to support designers by merging those qualities typically offered by sketching and modeling with advantages of digital interfaces.