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In Touch with the Future

Published: 15 November 2015 Publication History

Abstract

It was recently announced that there are now more than three billion touch screens in circulation [1]. What such a figure emphasizes, I think, is that touch is becoming an increasingly pervasive feature of our interaction with many technologies, from touch screen to vibrating cars all the way through to vibrating cutlery - really [2,3,6]! But what, exactly, is the advantage, or advantages of engaging this, our largest, sense? And what are the trade-offs? After all, a quick look at the history of the tactile stimulation of the skin surface resounds with promises that have gone unfulfilled: Anyone seen the tactile television, or bankers walking around with a vibrating belt communicating the latest stock market figures recently? I thought not! While I believe that effectively stimulating the skin surface holds many promises in the years to come, success in the real-world will only come from a proper understanding of the psychological limitations in tactile information processing, involving everything from tactile sensory suppression whenever we move (see [4]) through limits on multisensory perception and attention [2]. In this talk, I will highlight what I see as the biggest limitations of tactile stimulation/communication [5], before looking at some of the latest innovations that have really gotten me excited over the last couple of years in terms of showcasing what the world of digital tactile stimulation can potentially offer.

References

[1]
Press release: The digital world has touch: Immersion's haptic technology reaches milestone of 3 billion devices. http://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-digitalworld-has-touch-immersions-haptic-technologyreaches- milestone-of-3-billion-devices-2015-06--11 (downloaded on 17/08/2015).
[2]
Alberto Gallace and Charles Spence. 2014. In touch with the future: The sense of touch from cognitive neuroscience to virtual reality.
[3]
Cristy Ho and Charles Spence. 2008. The Multisensory Driver: Implications for Ergonomic Car Interface Design. Ashgate, Aldershot, England ; Burlington, VT.
[4]
Georgiana Juravle, Francis McGlone, and Charles Spence. 2013. Context-dependent changes in tactile perception during movement execution. Cognition 4: 913. http://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00913
[5]
Charles Spence. 2014. The Skin as a Medium for Sensory Substitution. Multisensory Research 27, 5--6: 293--312. http://doi.org/10.1163/22134808-00002452
[6]
Charles Spence and Betina Piqueras-Fiszman. 2014. The Perfect Meal: The Multisensory Science of Food and Dining. Wiley-Blackwell, Chichester, West Sussex, UK.

Cited By

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  • (2021)A Study of Cutaneous Perception Parameters for Designing Haptic Symbols towards Information TransferElectronics10.3390/electronics1017214710:17(2147)Online publication date: 3-Sep-2021
  • (2019)User engagement for mid-air haptic interactions with digital signageProceedings of the 8th ACM International Symposium on Pervasive Displays10.1145/3321335.3324944(1-7)Online publication date: 12-Jun-2019

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cover image ACM Conferences
ITS '15: Proceedings of the 2015 International Conference on Interactive Tabletops & Surfaces
November 2015
522 pages
ISBN:9781450338998
DOI:10.1145/2817721
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author.

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 15 November 2015

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Author Tags

  1. information processing
  2. multisensory perception
  3. tactile communication
  4. tactile stimulation
  5. touch

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ITS '15
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ITS '15: Interactive Tabletops and Surfaces
November 15 - 18, 2015
Madeira, Portugal

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ITS '15 Paper Acceptance Rate 29 of 122 submissions, 24%;
Overall Acceptance Rate 119 of 418 submissions, 28%

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Cited By

View all
  • (2021)A Study of Cutaneous Perception Parameters for Designing Haptic Symbols towards Information TransferElectronics10.3390/electronics1017214710:17(2147)Online publication date: 3-Sep-2021
  • (2019)User engagement for mid-air haptic interactions with digital signageProceedings of the 8th ACM International Symposium on Pervasive Displays10.1145/3321335.3324944(1-7)Online publication date: 12-Jun-2019

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