Understanding Stationary and Moving Direct Skin Vibrotactile Stimulation on the Palm

Elsayed, Hesham and Weigel, Martin and Müller, Florian and Ibrahim, George and Gugenheimer, Jan and Schmitz, Martin and Günther, Sebastian and Mühlhäuser, Max

Abstract: Palm-based tactile displays have the potential to evolve from single motor interfaces (e.g., smartphones) to high-resolution tactile displays (e.g., back-of-device haptic interfaces) enabling richer multi-modal experiences with more information. However, we lack a systematic understanding of vibrotactile perception on the palm and the influence of various factors on the core design decisions of tactile displays (number of actuators, resolution, and intensity). In a first experiment (N=16), we investigated the effect of these factors on the users’ ability to localize stationary sensations. In a second experiment (N=20), we explored the influence of resolution on recognition rate for moving tactile sensations.Findings show that for stationary sensations a 9 actuator display offers a good trade-off and a \3}times3 resolution can be accurately localized. For moving sensations, a \2}times4 resolution led to the highest recognition accuracy, while \5}times10 enables higher resolution output with a reasonable accuracy.
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