ITRI: An Electrostatic Haptic Display for the Visually Impaired

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This is the first year funding of a three-year continuing award. Access to non-textualmaterial for persons with visual impairments has become increasingly important in recent years. Tactile or haptic displays hold considerable advantages in term of non-textual information transfer, particularly for navigating in GUIs and in the transfer of graphic andspatial information (plots, bar graphs, etc.). This project will evaluate a new type of haptic display based on electrostatic stimulation (as opposed to the more common electrocutaneous or vibrotactile modes of stimulation). Electrostatic displays have the potential to overcome many of the problems of electrocutaneous and vibrotactile displays. Electrostatic displays can be easily batch fabricated using micro fabrication techniques, the percept is one of texture (there is negligible direct current flow into the skin) and there are no moving parts to stick or wear. The project will focus on the evaluation of the display for use in practical situations and will also lead to a better understanding of the perceptual mechanisms in electrostatic stimulation. Specifically,the work will focus in two areas: (1) evaluation of the display including learning effects, young vs. old, visually impaired vs. non-impaired, comparison to raised line drawings, pattern recognition, academic/business graphics and dynamic range, (2) development of improved display technology guided by continuous evaluation experiments.