Adaptive Vibrotactile Flow Rendering of 2.5D Surface Features on Touch Screen with Multiple Fingertip Interfaces

Abstract

This study presents a new vibrotactile fingertip interface and a rendering algorithm for 2.5D surface features on a touch screen. The fingertip device has four piezoelectric actuators surrounding both sides of a user's finger. The proposed algorithm generates a time-varying vibration flow in-between actuators, in which their intensities and durations adaptively changes according to local geometry under touch point. The proposed approach can provide separate effects on individual fingers by using multiple interfaces. The experiments revealed that a user can reliably distinguish height of virtual bump by the levels of 2.5+ out of 4, for both single and multi-touch interactions.