“/ed [sæ∫t]” by Ooshima, Fukuzawa, Hashimoto, Ando, Watanabe, et al. …

Vibration displays have been rapidly brought into every day life in the fields of communication and entertainment [1]. Notably, vibro-tactile feedback provided by game controllers has been intensively pursued to enrich haptic experiences in gaming. Haptic feedback in games is presented mainly to the hands with the game pad. However, though the game characters have a wide range of haptic experience in the virtual world, the feedback consists of simple shocks or vibration patterns. For example, though the characters in “Sword and Magic” are slashed by their enemies in swordfights, previous devices are not able to present realistic haptic sensations of such situations.

Here, we propose a novel vibro-tactile interface, called “/ed (slashed)”, which can present haptic sensation of movement on the body’s surface, such as that of being cut with a sword (Fig. 1A), and movement passing through the body, such as that of being pierced with a sharp object (Fig. 1B). Although body-worn haptic feedback devices (haptic vests) have been proposed [2], they cannot provide the new dimensions of haptic experience offered by our interface. With our interface, not only vibration patterns at a location, but also haptic movements on the body’s surface (frontal parallel plane) and internal movements passing through the body (sagittal dimension) can be accomplished.

References

[1] C. C. Collins: Tactile television – mechanical and electrical image projection, IEEE Man-Machine Systems, 1970.

[2] J. B. F. van Erp: Vibrotactile spatial acuity on the torso: effects of location and timing parameters, WorldHaptics 2005.