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Extending “out of the body” tactile phantom sensations to 2D and applying it to mobile interaction

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Abstract

Funneling and saltation are the two major perceptual illusion techniques for vibro-tactile feedback. They can be used to minimize the number of vibrators on the interaction device in contact with the user body and thereby build a less cumbersome and less expensive feedback device. Recently, these techniques have been found to elicit an “out of the body” experience, i.e., phantom tactile sensations indirectly felt from the handheld object (external to the body). This paper explores the practical applicability of this theoretical result to mobile tactile interaction. Two psychophysical experiments were first conducted to validate the effects of “out of the body” funneling and saltation on an actual handheld smart phone along (1) 1D and (2) when extended, for the first time, to 2D. A third experiment was run to evaluate user experience, applying phantom sensation based on vibro-tactile feedback, using funneling, to a real-world application. Experimental results have confirmed the same “out of the body” 1D illusory effects on an actual mobile device. In addition, a 2D modulated phantom sensation with a resolution of 5 × 3 on a 3.5-inch display space was achieved through saltation and funneling. Finally, we showed that the phantom sensation does significantly improve the user experience for a real-world application with a small additional cost of a few more vibrators, compared to a conventional single vibrator-based device.

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Notes

  1. While the evaluation scale used was rather arbitrary, different scales resulted in similar results.

  2. In the actual experiment, the display was divided into 60 grid regions (10 × 6), but every 2 × 2 region was treated as the same region (in the analysis) resulting in effectively a 5 × 3 grid. This was because most subjects complained the initial resolution was set too high.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported in part by the Basic Science Research Program of the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF No. 2011-0030079) and also in part by the Institute for Information & communications Technology Promotion grant (IITP No. R0190-15-2011, “Development of Vulnerability Discovery Technologies for IoT Software Security”), all funded by the Ministry of Science, ICT & Future Planning.

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  1. Digital Experience Laboratory, College of Information and Communications, Korea University, Anam-dong 5-ga, Seongbuk-gu, Seoul, Republic of Korea

    Youngsun Kim, Jaedong Lee & Gerard J. Kim

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  1. Youngsun Kim
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  2. Jaedong Lee
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  3. Gerard J. Kim
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Correspondence to Gerard J. Kim.

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Kim, Y., Lee, J. & Kim, G.J. Extending “out of the body” tactile phantom sensations to 2D and applying it to mobile interaction. Pers Ubiquit Comput 19, 1295–1311 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00779-015-0894-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00779-015-0894-4

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