Novel tactile display for emotional tactile experience

Abstract

We have proposed novel tactile display that presents high-fidelity tactile information by achieving a very wide frequency bandwidth. The system is composed of one or two speakers. Users hold the speakers between their hands while the speakers vibrate the air between the speakers and their palms. The user feels suction or pushing pressure on their palms from the air. Due to the very wide frequency range (1 Hz and below to 1 kHz and above), users can feel a variety of sensations. Furthermore, due to the indirect drive of the palm through the air, users feel uniform pressure without any feeling of the edges or shapes of hard contactors, which are necessary for an ordinary haptic interface to convey high frequency signals. In this paper, we introduce three application ideas by using this display that enable us to experience rich tactile expressions. We also show some pilot studies to realize these ideas, first implementations of them and result of exhibition.