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Designing Vibrotactile Widgets with Printed Actuators and Sensors

Abstract

Physical controls are fabricated through complicated assembly of parts requiring expensive machinery and are prone to mechanical wear. One solution is to embed controls directly in interactive surfaces, but the proprioceptive part of gestural interaction that makes physical controls discoverable and usable solely by hand gestures is lost and has to be compensated, by vibrotactile feedback for instance. Vibrotactile actuators face the same aforementioned issues as for physical controls. We propose printed vibrotactile actuators and sensors. They are printed on plastic sheets, with piezoelectric ink for actuation, and with silver ink for conductive elements, such as wires and capacitive sensors. These printed actuators and sensors make it possible to design vibrotactile widgets on curved surfaces, without complicated mechanical assembly

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