Dunkelberger Nathan, Sullivan Jennifer L, Bradley Joshua, Manickam Indu, Dasarathy Gautam, Baraniuk Richard, O'Malley Marcia K
IEEE Trans Haptics. 2021 Jan-Mar;14(1):188-199. doi: 10.1109/TOH.2020.3009581. Epub 2021 Mar 24.
Communication is an important part of our daily interactions; however, communication can be hindered, either through visual or auditory impairment, or because usual communication channels are overloaded. When standard communication channels are not available, our sense of touch offers an alternative sensory modality for transmitting messages. Multi-sensory haptic cues that combine multiple types of haptic sensations have shown promise for applications, such as haptic communication, that require large discrete cue sets while maintaining a small, wearable form factor. This article presents language transmission using a multi-sensory haptic device that occupies a small footprint on the upper arm. In our approach, phonemes are encoded as multisensory haptic cues consisting of vibration, radial squeeze, and lateral skin stretch components. Participants learned to identify haptically transmitted phonemes and words after training across a four day training period. A subset of our participants continued their training to extend word recognition free response. Participants were able to identify words after four days using multiple choice with an accuracy of 89% and after eight days using free response with an accuracy of 70%. These results show promise for the use of multisensory haptics for haptic communication, demonstrating high word recognition performance with a small, wearable device.
交流是我们日常互动的重要组成部分；然而，交流可能会受到阻碍，这要么是由于视觉或听觉障碍，要么是因为常用的交流渠道过载。当标准交流渠道不可用时，我们的触觉提供了一种传递信息的替代感官方式。结合多种触觉感受的多感官触觉线索在诸如触觉通信等应用中显示出了前景，这些应用需要大量离散线索集，同时保持小巧的可穿戴外形。本文介绍了一种使用多感官触觉设备的语言传输，该设备在上臂占用的空间很小。在我们的方法中，音素被编码为多感官触觉线索，由振动、径向挤压和横向皮肤拉伸成分组成。参与者在为期四天的训练期内经过训练后学会了识别通过触觉传输的音素和单词。我们的一部分参与者继续训练以扩展单词识别自由反应。参与者在四天后使用多项选择能够识别单词，准确率为89%，在八天后使用自由反应能够识别单词，准确率为70%。这些结果表明多感官触觉用于触觉通信具有前景，展示了使用小巧的可穿戴设备实现高单词识别性能。
