Tactile navigation display

Abstract

The use of the tactile modality is not common in Human Computer Interaction. However, there may be good reasons to do so. For example in situations in which the visual sense is restricted (e.g., in virtual environments lacking a wide field of view, or for the visually handicapped persons), or overloaded (e.g., flying an airplane or driving in an unknown city). The lack of a wide visual field of view excludes the use of peripheral vision and may therefore degrade navigation, orientation, motion perception, and object detection. Tactile actuators applied to the torso, however, have a 360° horizontal ‘field of touch’, and may therefore be suited to compensate for the degraded visual information.