Keep in Touch

We present a portable 12x16 taxel haptic display optimized to rapidly display dynamic graphical information. Each taxel changes state (up/down) in under 5 milliseconds, allowing the entire display of 192 independent taxels to be refreshed in under 2 seconds. The user uses his sense of fine touch to explore the 7-inch display. We demonstrate applications in serious gaming (tactile Pong for the visually impaired), remote collaboration between sighted and visually-impaired users (remote user draws in real-time on the local haptic display), and navigation scenarios. Information can be displayed as a series of static relief images, or as a static image with moving or vibrating taxels. For the navigation task, the outline of a room and furniture is shown first as a static relief, the path to be followed is added as a moving taxels, and the user location is shown as a vibrating taxel. The taxels latch in both up and down states, leading to low power consumption.