Creating mediated touch gestures with vibrotactile stimuli for smart phones

Abstract

Mediated touch gestures are essential for delivering information in social networking. This study presents a method to create mediated touch gestures with vibrotactile stimuli for smart phones and explores the effectiveness of applying mediated touch gestures with vibrotactile stimuli when sending text and stickers in instant messaging applications. We developed a preliminary prototype to record vibration signals of touch gestures. The envelopes of the recorded signals are approximated by piecewise linear functions and then translated to MIDI parameters for generating vibrotactile stimuli. We applied mediated touch gestures in instant messaging applications as haptic icons. A user study showed that gesture traits and the contact time affected the sensation of haptic icons. The enhancement effect of touch gestures was influenced by the contact time.