Electrostatic Friction Displays to Enhance Touchscreen Experience

Touchscreens are versatile devices that can display visual content and receive touch input, but they lack the ability to provide programmable tactile feedback. This limitation has been addressed by a few approaches generally called surface haptics technology. This technology modulates the friction between a user’s fingertip and a touchscreen surface to create different tactile sensations when the finger explores the touchscreen. This functionality enables the user to see and feel digital content simultaneously, leading to improved usability and user experiences. One major approach in surface haptics relies on the electrostatic force induced between the finger and an insulating surface on the touchscreen by supplying high AC voltage. The use of AC also induces a vibrational sensation called electrovibration to the user. Electrostatic friction displays require only electrical components and provide uniform friction over the screen. This tactile feedback technology not only allows easy and lightweight integration into touchscreen devices but also provides dynamic, rich, and satisfactory user interfaces. In this chapter, we review the fundamental operation of the electrovibration technology as well as applications have been built upon

Electrotactile feedback applications for hand and arm interactions: A systematic review, meta-analysis, and future directions

Haptic feedback is critical in a broad range of human-machine/computer-interaction applications. However, the high cost and low portability/wearability of haptic devices remain unresolved issues, severely limiting the adoption of this otherwise promising technology. Electrotactile interfaces have the advantage of being more portable and wearable due to their reduced actuators' size, as well as their lower power consumption and manufacturing cost. The applications of electrotactile feedback have been explored in human-computer interaction and human-machine-interaction for facilitating hand-based interactions in applications such as prosthetics, virtual reality, robotic teleoperation, surface haptics, portable devices, and rehabilitation. This paper presents a technological overview of electrotactile feedback, as well a systematic review and meta-analysis of its applications for hand-based interactions. We discuss the different electrotactile systems according to the type of application. We also discuss over a quantitative congregation of the findings, to offer a high-level overview into the state-of-art and suggest future directions. Electrotactile feedback systems showed increased portability/wearability, and they were successful in rendering and/or augmenting most tactile sensations, eliciting perceptual processes, and improving performance in many scenarios. However, knowledge gaps (e.g., embodiment), technical (e.g., recurrent calibration, electrodes' durability) and methodological (e.g., sample size) drawbacks were detected, which should be addressed in future studies.Comment: 18 pages, 1 table, 8 figures, under review in Transactions on Haptics. This work has been submitted to the IEEE for possible publication. Copyright may be transferred without notice, after which this version may no longer be accessible.Upon acceptance of the article by IEEE, the preprint article will be replaced with the accepted versio

An Overview of Wearable Haptic Technologies and Their Performance in Virtual Object Exploration.

We often interact with our environment through manual handling of objects and exploration of their properties. Object properties (OP), such as texture, stiffness, size, shape, temperature, weight, and orientation provide necessary information to successfully perform interactions. The human haptic perception system plays a key role in this. As virtual reality (VR) has been a growing field of interest with many applications, adding haptic feedback to virtual experiences is another step towards more realistic virtual interactions. However, integrating haptics in a realistic manner, requires complex technological solutions and actual user-testing in virtual environments (VEs) for verification. This review provides a comprehensive overview of recent wearable haptic devices (HDs) categorized by the OP exploration for which they have been verified in a VE. We found 13 studies which specifically addressed user-testing of wearable HDs in healthy subjects. We map and discuss the different technological solutions for different OP exploration which are useful for the design of future haptic object interactions in VR, and provide future recommendations

Sparkle: Hover Feedback with Touchable Electric Arcs

Many finger sensing input devices now support proximity input, enabling users to perform in-air gestures. While near-surface interactions increase the input vocabulary, they lack tactile feedback, making it hard for users to perform gestures or to know when the interaction takes place. Sparkle stimulates the fingertip with touchable electric arcs above a hover sensing device to give users in-air tactile or thermal feedback, sharper and more feelable than acoustic mid-air haptic devices. We present the design of a high voltage resonant transformer with a low-loss soft ferrite core and self-tuning driver circuit, with which we create electric arcs 6 mm in length, and combine this technology with infrared proximity sensing in two proof-of-concept devices with form factor and functionality similar to a button and a touchpad. We provide design guidelines for Sparkle devices and examples of stimuli in application scenarios, and report the results of a user study on the perceived sensations. Sparkle is the first step towards providing a new type of hover feedback, and it does not require users to wear tactile stimulators

Multilayer haptic feedback for pen-based tablet interaction

We present a novel, multilayer interaction approach that enables state transitions between spatially above-screen and 2D on-screen feedback layers. This approach supports the exploration of haptic features that are hard to simulate using rigid 2D screens. We accomplish this by adding a haptic layer above the screen that can be actuated and interacted with (pressed on) while the user interacts with on-screen content using pen input. The haptic layer provides variable firmness and contour feedback, while its membrane functionality affords additional tactile cues like texture feedback. Through two user studies, we look at how users can use the layer in haptic exploration tasks, showing that users can discriminate well between different firmness levels, and can perceive object contour characteristics. Demonstrated also through an art application, the results show the potential of multilayer feedback to extend on-screen feedback with additional widget, tool and surface properties, and for user guidance

Somatic ABC's: A Theoretical Framework for Designing, Developing and Evaluating the Building Blocks of Touch-Based Information Delivery

abstract: Situations of sensory overload are steadily becoming more frequent as the ubiquity of technology approaches reality--particularly with the advent of socio-communicative smartphone applications, and pervasive, high speed wireless networks. Although the ease of accessing information has improved our communication effectiveness and efficiency, our visual and auditory modalities--those modalities that today's computerized devices and displays largely engage--have become overloaded, creating possibilities for distractions, delays and high cognitive load; which in turn can lead to a loss of situational awareness, increasing chances for life threatening situations such as texting while driving. Surprisingly, alternative modalities for information delivery have seen little exploration. Touch, in particular, is a promising candidate given that it is our largest sensory organ with impressive spatial and temporal acuity. Although some approaches have been proposed for touch-based information delivery, they are not without limitations including high learning curves, limited applicability and/or limited expression. This is largely due to the lack of a versatile, comprehensive design theory--specifically, a theory that addresses the design of touch-based building blocks for expandable, efficient, rich and robust touch languages that are easy to learn and use. Moreover, beyond design, there is a lack of implementation and evaluation theories for such languages. To overcome these limitations, a unified, theoretical framework, inspired by natural, spoken language, is proposed called Somatic ABC's for Articulating (designing), Building (developing) and Confirming (evaluating) touch-based languages. To evaluate the usefulness of Somatic ABC's, its design, implementation and evaluation theories were applied to create communication languages for two very unique application areas: audio described movies and motor learning. These applications were chosen as they presented opportunities for complementing communication by offloading information, typically conveyed visually and/or aurally, to the skin. For both studies, it was found that Somatic ABC's aided the design, development and evaluation of rich somatic languages with distinct and natural communication units.Dissertation/ThesisPh.D. Computer Science 201

Piezo Elektriksel Etki İle Aktive Edilen Dokunmatik Ekranların Titreşim Analizleri

Konferans Bildirisi-- İstanbul Teknik Üniversitesi, Teorik ve Uygulamalı Mekanik Türk Milli Komitesi, 2017Conference Paper -- İstanbul Technical University, Theoretical and Applied Mechanical Turkish National Committee, 2017Taşınabilir elektronik cihazlar üzerindeki dokunmatik ekranlarda genellikle görsel ve işitsel geri bildirimler kullanılmaktadır. Bu cihazlar, gürültülü ve dikkat dağıtıcı ortamlarda kullanıldığı zaman çoğunlukla mevcut geri bildirim yöntemleri yetersiz kalmakta ve cihazın kullanılabilirliği ciddi derecede azalmaktadır. Bu nedenle yeni bir teknolojiye ihtiyaç duyulmaktadır. Dokunmatik ekranlara hareket verilerek parmak uçlarındaki sinirlerin uyarılması ile oluşturulan dokunsal geri bildirimler son zamanlarda bu sektörde önem kazanmaya başlayan konulardan birisidir. Dokunmatik geri bildirim düzeneği için piezo elemanlar kullanılmaktadır. Piezo elemanlar malzeme özellikleri gereği üzerlerine gerilim uygulandığında şekil değiştirmektedirler. Eğer bu zorlama sinüzoidal ise bu aktivasyon ile bağlı oldukları eleman olan ekranı da titreştirmektedirler. Piezo elemanlara mekanik çalışma sınırları içerisinde tüm titreşim fonksiyonları uygulanabilmektedir. Böylelikle kalp atışı, patlama sesi gibi her çeşit titreşim fonksiyonu dokunmatik ekran üzerinde oluşturulabilmektedir. Bu çalışmada sektörde kullanılan farklı tasarım parametrelerine sahip ekran camlarının titreşim mod yapıları incelenmiştir. Ekranın mod yapıları sonlu elemanlar mantığı (SEM) ile çalışan COMSOL programında elde edilmiştir. Bu programda piezo elemanların malzeme ve elektriksel özellikleri dikkate alınmaktadır. Ekran üzerinde en iyi titreşim fonksiyonunu üretebilmek için farklı piezo sayısı ve farklı piezo yerleşimleri için titreşim analizleri COMSOL programı ile karşılaştırılmıştır. Sonuç olarak en iyi titreşim fonksiyonunu üreten tasarım elde edilmiştir.An audiovisual feedback is used on touch screens in portable electronic devices. When these devices are used in noisy and distracting environments, suitable available feedback methods is severely inadequate and the availability of the device severely reduced. For this reason, the users need a new technology. The fingertip nerves are warned by the vibration of the touch screen. Tactile feedback is one of the issues that have recently gained importance in this sector. Piezo elements are used for the touch feedback mechanism. Piezo elements can change shape when the tension applied due to material properties. If this coercion is sinusoidal, the screen, which is the component of those connected by this activation, will also vibrate. All vibration functions can apply to piezo elements within mechanical working limits. Thus, all kinds of vibration functions such as heartbeat, explosion sound can be created on the touch screen. In this study, vibration mode structures of glasses with different design parameters are investigated. The results are obtained with software with COMSOL program. In this program, the material and electrical properties of the piezo elements are taken into account. The vibration analysis for different piezo numbers and different piezo locations were compared with the COMSOL program. As a result, a design that produces the best vibration function is determined

Haptics: Science, Technology, Applications

This open access book constitutes the proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Human Haptic Sensing and Touch Enabled Computer Applications, EuroHaptics 2022, held in Hamburg, Germany, in May 2022. The 36 regular papers included in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from 129 submissions. They were organized in topical sections as follows: haptic science; haptic technology; and haptic applications