HapTONE: Haptic instrument for enriched musical play (II)—system detail

Abstract

We developed a novel musical entertainment system ‘HapTONE’ that draws on auditory, tactile, and visual senses. HapTONE presents players with high-fidelity vibrotactile sensations, not only after a key on pressing the keyboard but also during the actual process of pressing the key itself. HapTONE is composed of eight key units that is composed of a vibrator and a distance sensor. This instrument reproduces the touch sensation of a keyboard and stringed, wind, percussion or non-musical instruments. We also developed some applications using HapTONE, which were exhibited at the computer graphics and interactive techniques conference ‘SIGGRAPH 2016’. In this paper, we describe the system details of HapTONE that enable accurate, low-latency feedback and easy expansion.