Abstract
This paper provides a novel psychophysical investigation of head-mounted vibrotactile interfaces for sensory augmentation. A 1-by-7 headband vibrotactile display was used to provide stimuli on each participant’s forehead. Experiment I investigated the ability to identify the location of a vibrotactile stimulus presented to a single tactor in the display; results indicated that localization error is uniform but biased towards the forehead midline. In Experiment II, two tactors were activated simultaneously, and participants were asked to indicate whether they experienced one or two stimulus locations. Participants reported the funneling illusion—experiencing one stimulus when two tactors were activated—mainly for the shortest inter-tactor difference. We discuss the significance of these results for the design of head-mounted vibrotactile displays and in relation to research on localization and funneling on different body surfaces.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsReferences
Geldard, F.A.: Some neglected possibilities of communication. Science 131(3413), 1583–1588 (1960)
Kaczmarek, K.A., Bach-Y-Rita, P.: Tactile displays. In: Barfield, W., Furness, T. (eds.) Virtual environments and advanced interface design, pp. 349–414. Oxford University Press, New York (1995)
Cassinelli, A., Reynolds, C., Ishikawa, M.: Augmenting spatial awareness with haptic radar. In: 10th IEEE International Symposium on Wearable Computers (2006)
Bertram, C., Evans, M.H., Javaid, M., Stafford, T., Prescott, T.: Sensory augmentation with distal touch: the tactile helmet project. In: Lepora, N.F., Mura, A., Krapp, H.G., Verschure, P.F., Prescott, T.J. (eds.) Living Machines 2013. LNCS, vol. 8064, pp. 24–35. Springer, Heidelberg (2013)
Van Erp, J.B.: Presenting directions with a vibrotactile torso display. Ergonomics 48(3), 302–313 (2005)
Jones, L.A., Lockyer, B., Piateski, E.: Tactile display and vibrotactile recognition on the torso. Adv. Robot. 20, 1359–1374 (2006)
Lindeman, R.W., Yanagida, Y.: Empirical studies for effective near-field haptics in virtual environments. In: Proceedings of the IEEE Virtual Reality Conference, pp. 287–288. IEEE Computer Society, Los Alamitos, CA (2003)
Jones, L.A., Held, D., Hunter, I.: Surface waves and spatial localization in vibrotactile displays. In: IEEE Haptics Symposium, pp. 91–94 (2010)
Cholewiak, R.W., Brill, J.C., Schwab, A.: Vibrotactile localization on the abdomen: Effects of place and space. Percept. Psychophys. 66(6), 970–987 (2004)
Jones, L.A., Ray, K.: Localization and pattern recognition with tactile displays. In: Haptic Interfaces for Virtual Environment and Teleoperator Systems, IEEE Symposium on Haptics, pp. 33–39 (2008)
Bekesy, G.V.: Funneling in the nervous system and its role in loudness and sensation intensity on the skin. J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 30(5), 399–412 (1958)
Cha, J., Rahal, L., El Saddik, A.: A pilot study on simulating continuous sensation with two vibrating motors. In: Proceedings of HAVE, pp. 143–147 (2008)
Alles, D.S.: Information transmission by phantom sensations. IEEE Trans. Man-Mach. Syst. 11(1), 85–91 (1970)
Rahal, L., Cha, J., El Saddik, A.: Continuous tactile perception for vibrotactile displays. In: IEEE International Workshop on Robotic and Sensors Environments (ROSE), pp. 86–91 (2009)
Stafford, T., Javaid, M., Mitchinson, B., Galloway, A.M.J., Prescott, T.J.: Integrating augmented senses into active perception: a framework. In: Poster Presented at Royal Society meeting on Active Touch Sensing, 31 Jan–02 Feb 2011 (2011)
Dobrzynski, M.K., et al.: Quantifying information transfer through a head-attached vibrotactile display: principles for design and control. IEEE Trans. Biomed. Eng. 59(7), 2011–2018 (2012)
Barghout, A., et al.: Spatial resolution of vibrotactile perception on the human forearm when exploiting funneling illusion. In: IEEE International Workshop on Haptic Audiovisual Environments and Games (HAVE), pp. 19–23 (2009)
Sofia, K.O., Jones, L.A.: Mechanical and psychophysical studies of surface wave propagation during vibrotactile stimulation. IEEE Trans. Haptics 6, 320–329 (2013)
Prescott, T.J., Wing, A.M.: Active touch sensing. Philoshipcal Trans. R. Soci. B. Biol. Sci. 366(1581), 2989–2995 (2011)
O’Regan, K., Noë, A.: A sensorimotor account of vision and visual consciousness. Behav. Brain Sci. 24(5), 939–973 (2001)
Acknowledgment
This work was supported by the University of Sheffield Search and Rescue 2020 project and in parts by the EU project BEAMING 248620.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2014 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Kerdegari, H., Kim, Y., Stafford, T., Prescott, T.J. (2014). Centralizing Bias and the Vibrotactile Funneling Illusion on the Forehead. In: Auvray, M., Duriez, C. (eds) Haptics: Neuroscience, Devices, Modeling, and Applications. EuroHaptics 2014. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 8619. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-44196-1_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-44196-1_8
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-662-44195-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-662-44196-1
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)