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Hendrik Richter, Benedikt Blaha, Alexander Wiethoff, Dominikus Baur, Andreas Butz
Tactile Feedback without a Big Fuss: Simple Actuators for High-Resolution Phantom Sensations In Proceedings of the 13th ACM International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing - UbiComp'11, Beijing, China, September 2011. (bib) |
Multi-touch screens and surfaces for manipulating digital content play a crucial role in mobile and ubiquitous computing. Augmenting these interactive surfaces with tactile feedback has been found to increase interaction speed, reduce operating errors and minimize visual and cognitive load. Communicating detailed tactile characteristics of virtual elements, however, requires complex electromechanical or electrostatic actuator setups. This increase in complexity makes tactile interfaces intricate, costly or poorly scalable. In order to provide sophisticated tactile sensations with simple actuator technology, we exploit a haptic psychophysical phenomenon called Phantom Sensation. We present a comparison of three standard tactile actuator technologies to see which one can recreate the Phantom Sensation with maximum effect. Our results show the way to a simple and scalable implementation of illusion-based tactile feedback for interactive surfaces. We explore the notion of the Phantom Sensation and its possible applications within a ubicomp scenario. |