Haptic Mediation through Artificial Intelligence: Magnetorheological Fluid as Vibrotactile Signal Mediator

Although, systems providing multimodal haptic feedback have evolved in the last five years, most implementations still use tactile feedback as a secondary support mechanism to auditory and visual modalities. It can be argued that there is a need to redesign current interaction systems and the technologies utilized for providing feedback to ensure the role of haptics can be enhanced further. New embedded actuation systems can unlock the true potential of haptic communication and improve the efficiency of tactile output and power consumptions within today’s mobile and handheld devices. Additionally, challenges in creating reliable vibrotactile feedback within noisy environments can be addressed by developing a dynamic actuation platform. This research proposes the use of an AI-driven dynamically adaptive process to generate, mediate and verify tactile signals created for surface-based interaction. Our approach looks at vibrotactile feedback from a holistic point of view and targets creating reliable end-to-end communication across devices and environments. This research shows how to improve the three individual components of vibrotactile feedback, and to integrating the collected output in such a way that reduces signal attenuation and integration across a wide range of environments and application.