Social Haptic Communication mimicked with vibrotactile patterns:an evaluation by users with deafblindness

Many devices, such as smart phones, implement vibration motors for tactile feedback. When multiple vibration motors are placed on, for instance, the backrest of a chair it is possible to trace shapes on the back of a person by sequentially switching motors on and off. Social Haptic Communication (SHC) is a tactile mode of communication for persons with deafblindness that makes use of tracing shapes or other types of spatiotemporal patterns with the hand on the back of another person. This could be emulated using vibrotactile patterns. Here we investigated whether SHC users with deafblindness would recognize the vibrotactile patterns as SHC signs (Haptices). In several cases the participants immediately linked a vibrotactile patterns to the Haptice that is was meant to imitate. Together with the participants we improved and expanded the set of vibrotactile patterns.</p

Діяльність органів військової цензури 1914–1917 рр.: історико-правові аспекти

У статті на основі широкого архівного матеріалу проаналізовано законодавство, яке регламентувало функціонування органів військової цензури в Російській імперії протягом 1914–1917рр.In the article on base of the broad archive material legislation, providing operation of military censorship organ in Russian empire during 1914–1917 is analysed

Influence of Shape Elements on Performance during Haptic Rotation

Krieger K, Moringen A, Kappers AML, Ritter H. Influence of Shape Elements on Performance during Haptic Rotation. In: Haptics: Science, Technology, and Applications 11th International Conference, EuroHaptics 2018, Proceedings, Part I. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Vol 10893. Cham: Springer; 2018: 125-137

Minute hands of clocks indicating the same time are not perceived as haptically parallel

Many studies have already shown that a large idiosyncratic orientation di erence is needed to perceive two bars that are far apart as haptically parallel. There exist also strong indications that if such bars are imagined to be minute hands of clocks, errors made in clock time estimates and clock time settings are much smaller. The current study investigated this seemingly discrepancy. Participants partook in three experiments: parallel setting, clock time estimate and clock time setting, in this order. As the individual parallel settings were used in the subsequent clock time estimate experiment, and the estimated clock times in the clock time setting experiment, the deviations could be compared directly. In all three experiments, the deviations were systematic and idiosyncratic, and consistent with a biasing in uence of an egocentric reference frame. However, the deviations in the two clock time experiments were indeed much smaller than in the parallel setting experiment. Task instruction and strengthened focus on an allocentric reference frame are the most likely explanations. These ndings provide fundamental insights in the processing of spatial information. Taking these ndings into account when designing haptic devices may make these more intuitive

Comparison of parameter sets for temporal decomposition of speech

Temporal decomposition of a. speech utterance results in a description of speech panmeters in terms of overlapping target functions and associated target vectors. Although developed for economical speech coding, this method also provide! an interesting tool for deriving phonetic information from the acoustic speech signal. The target vectors may correspond to idealized articulatory targets; the target fun ctions describe the temporal evolution of these targets. The speech parameters used by Atal whe n he proposed this method (1983) are the log-area parameters. Our modified temporal decomposition method (1987) alro works with these parameters as input.. However, in principle, most commonly used parameter sets can be used. In t his paper we compare the results for six different sets of speech parameters . The main performance criterion will be the phonetic relevance of the target functions. The phonetic interpretation of the target vectors and the resynthesis of the speech signal will also be considered as criteria. From our experiments, we will conclude that the filter bank output para.meters and the log-area parameters are the most suitable parameter set! available for temporal decomposition