University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO, USA.
Soterix Medical, Inc., New York, NY, USA.
Hum Factors. 2024 Mar;66(3):862-871. doi: 10.1177/00187208221119879. Epub 2022 Aug 16.
We propose and assess galvanic vestibular stimulation (GVS) as a novel means to provide information dissociated from self-orientation.
In modern user interfaces, visual and auditory modalities dominate information transfer so much that these "processing channels" become overloaded with information. Fortunately, the brain is capable of processing separate sensory sources in parallel enabling alternative display modalities to inform operators more effectively and without increasing cognitive strain. To date, the vestibular system, normally responsible for sensing self-orientation and helping with balance, has not been considered as a display modality.
Bilateral GVS was provided at 0.6 mA for 1-second intervals with moderately high-frequency sinusoidal waveforms, designed to not elicit sensations of self-motion. We assessed subjects' ability to differentiate between two cues of different frequencies.
We found subjects were able to reliably distinguish between cues with an average just-noticeable difference threshold of only ±12 Hz (range across subjects: 5.4-19.6 Hz) relative to a pedestal cue of 50 Hz. Further, we found the GVS sensory modality to be robust to various environments: walking, standing, sitting, passive motion, and loud background noise. Finally, the application of the GVS cues did not have significant destabilizing effects when standing or walking.
These results show that GVS may be an effective alternative display modality, using varying frequency to encode information. It is robust to various operational environments and non-destabilizing.
A fully functional display can convey information to operators of vehicles and other machinery as well as high-performance operators like astronauts and soldiers.
我们提出并评估电前庭刺激（GVS）作为一种提供与自我定位分离的信息的新方法。
在现代用户界面中，视觉和听觉模态主导着信息传递，以至于这些“处理通道”被信息淹没。幸运的是，大脑能够并行处理单独的感觉源，从而使替代显示模式能够更有效地向操作员提供信息，而不会增加认知负担。迄今为止，通常负责感知自我定位和帮助平衡的前庭系统尚未被视为显示模式。
以 0.6 mA 的电流提供 1 秒间隔的双侧 GVS，使用中频正弦波波形，旨在不引起自我运动的感觉。我们评估了受试者区分两种不同频率提示的能力。
我们发现，与 50 Hz 的基准提示相比，受试者能够可靠地区分具有平均仅±12 Hz（受试者范围：5.4-19.6 Hz）的差异阈值的提示。此外，我们发现 GVS 感觉模态对各种环境具有鲁棒性：行走、站立、坐着、被动运动和背景噪音大。最后，GVS 提示的应用在站立或行走时没有显著的不稳定影响。
这些结果表明，GVS 可能是一种有效的替代显示模式，使用不同的频率来编码信息。它对各种操作环境具有鲁棒性，并且不会产生不稳定性。
功能齐全的显示器可以向车辆和其他机器的操作员以及像宇航员和士兵这样的高性能操作员传达信息。
