Operation Guidance Method for Touch Devices by Direction Presentation Using Anisotropic Roughness

Abstract

Most previous studies of tactile presentation for touch devices have presented tactile cues as a function of the position of the finger. In the current study, we examined whether directional information could be presented by modulating tactile cues depending on the direction of motion of the finger, using a new method called “anisotropic tactile presentation”. Preliminary experiments confirmed that direction presentation and navigation to a goal could be achieved by decreasing the presentation of roughness when moving in the designated direction. In addition, we conducted two experiments comparing the proposed system with a conventional position-based guidance method. The results revealed that the proposed method enabled participants to search for the target more quickly and accurately compared with the conventional tactile presentation method.