Creating New Tactile Sensations for Tactile Aids with Designer Materials

项目总结 对于盲人来说，图形或情节等视觉辅助工具是不可访问的。取而代之的是使用触觉辅助来帮助渲染 通过排列物理特征来抽象概念，如凹凸、线条和纹理。尽管有用， 静态触觉辅助工具不能容易地呈现许多抽象概念，并且在显示大型 信息量很大。显示密集、复杂信息的一个关键问题是使用太多行或 小空间里的凹凸不平会造成“触觉混乱”，导致用户的困惑和误解。事实上, 触觉辅助通过触摸来呈现信息的能力实际上已经达到了最大限度。虽然制造成本是 随着新兴技术的发展，使用凹凸图案和纹理渲染的核心技术 通过触摸获得的信息基本保持不变。目前的大多数研究都没有集中于解决这一问题。 基本的限制，取而代之的是使用其他感官，如音频。因此，有 在触觉辅助产生的触觉刺激方面进展甚微，这限制了他们制作复杂的能力 盲人可以获取的信息。解决缺乏在静态中创造触觉的方法 触觉辅助，这项研究将增加触觉的种类和密度，使用“设计师材料”。 与凸起和线条等物理特征不同，设计者材料是使用现象的表面涂层 从表面化学到控制粘合和摩擦，从而产生新的触感。依靠 在表面化学方面，有可能施加目前不可能实现的控制和空间分辨率水平。 设计师材料将与当前的物理特征相结合，以构建更易于阅读的下一代 和更多的信息密集的触觉辅助。这些触觉辅助工具将在一系列日常活动中进行演示 盲人受试者。这个项目结合了我们团队在材料科学、固体力学、人类 心理物理学和触觉辅助发展。我们的项目以发现新的设计师为中心 材料，开发下一代触觉辅助器，以及对触觉辅助器优化设计的机械研究。 结合起来，这些领域允许我们快速迭代新的触觉辅助工具，为设计建立合理的指导方针 传统和下一代触觉辅助工具，并在触觉辅助工具包中提供了亟需的扩展 开发商。为了最大限度地发挥影响，该项目的各个方面都涉及与盲人成员的密切合作 社区。

PROJECT SUMMARY For blind people, visual aids like a graphic or a plot are not accessible. Instead, tactile aids are used help render abstract concepts through an arrangement of physical features, like bumps, lines, and textures. Although useful, static tactile aids cannot easily render many abstract concepts and still face difficulties when displaying large amounts of information. A key issue with displaying dense, complex information is that using too many lines or bumps in a small space creates “tactile clutter”, leading to confusion and misinterpretation by the user. In fact, the ability of tactile aids to render information by touch is practically at full capacity. While fabrication costs are lowering with emerging technologies, the core technology of using patterns of bumps and textures to render information by touch has largely remained the same. Most current research is not focused on addressing this fundamental limitation and instead sidesteps by using other senses instead, like audio. Therefore, there has been little progress in tactile stimuli generated by a tactile aid, which has limited their ability to make complex information accessible for blind people. To address the lack of methods to create tactile sensations in static tactile aids, this research will increase the variety and density of tactile sensations by using “designer materials”. Designer materials, unlike physical features like bumps and lines, are surface coatings which use phenomena from surface chemistry to control adhesion and friction and thereby generate new tactile sensations. By relying on surface chemistry, it is possible to exert a level of control and spatial resolution not currently possible. Designer materials will be combined with current physical features to build the next generation of easier-to-read and more information dense tactile aids. These tactile aids will be demonstrated in a series of everyday activities with blind subjects. This project combines our team’s expertise in material science, solid mechanics, human psychophysics, and tactile aid development. Our project is centered around the discovery of new designer materials, developing next generation tactile aids, and mechanistic studies into the optimal design of tactile aids. Together, these areas allow us to rapidly iterate new tactile aids, build rationale guidelines for designing traditional and next generation tactile aids, and provides a much-needed expansion in the toolkit for tactile aid developers. To maximize impact, all aspects of the project involve close collaboration with members of the blind community.