Design of a wearable tactile display

Tactile displays are a viable way for people to interact with wearable computers. Human tactile perception is robust. A variety of shrinking tactile stimulator (tactor) technologies are available. Tactile displays are uniquely appropriate for wearable applications because of their close proximity to our 20 square feet of touch receptors: our skin. Tactile displays can solve issues of intrusive computers and multiple demands on user visual and audio attention. They are discreet and seamlessly integrate with most human activity. Tactile displays will neither conflict with nor replace audio and visual display but rather support information on these other displays and fill in the gaps where necessary. This paper presents our work in optimizing the design of a tactile display and discusses some of the issues and opportunities surrounding tactile displays for wearable computers. Additionally, we hope to inspire more work in this area.

Introduction

The Wearable Group at Carnegie Mellon has been designing and testing wearable computers for industrial and military maintenance applications for 10 years. These applications find our users in warehouses, aircraft hangars in cockpits and vehicles in rain or bright sun. Diverse and extreme situations such as these open the user to uncontrollable variables such as lighting, ambient noise, weather and a plethora of distractions. As a result the interaction and interface with wearable and mobile computers continues to be a major area of research, development, and innovation [1], [2,].