High-resolution tactile display for lips

Abstract

We developed a novel haptic display taking advantage of the sensitivity of the lips. Lips are one of the most sensitive regions of the human body similar to fingertip. Our display presents vibrotactile stimuli using piezo bimorph cells; the system is capable of presenting vibration on sixteen points on a lip in 2mm pitch. We conducted experiments to evaluate the spatial discrimination characteristics of vibrotactile stimuli presented by our system. In the experiment, the two-point discrimination in simultaneous and sequential stimulations was investigated, and they were proved to be approximately 8mm and 2mm respectively. We also conducted an experiment that evaluates the amount of information that can be transmitted through the system; recognition of the patterns of vibration using three and four cells were investigated. It was proved that approximate bitrate of the interface was 3 bit/s.