Studying the Perception of Vibrotactile Haptic Cues on the Finger, Hand and Forearm for Representing Microgestures
In Proceedings of the IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR 2024). 2024.
Suliac Lavenant, Alix Goguey, Sylvain Malacria, Laurence Nigay, Thomas Pietrzak
Abstract
We explore the use of vibrotactile haptic cues for representing microgestures. We built a four-axes haptic device for providing vibrotactile cues mapped to all four fingers. We also designed six patterns, inspired by six most commonly studied microgestures. The patterns can be played independently on each axis of the device. We ran an experiment with 36 participants testing three different device locations (fingers, back of the hand, and forearm) for pattern and axis recognition. For all three device locations, participants interpreted the patterns with similar accuracy. We also found that they were better at distinguishing the axes when the device is placed on the fingers. Hand and Forearm device locations remain suitable alternatives but involve a greater trade-off between recognition rate and expressiveness. We report the recognition rates obtained for the different patterns, axes and their combinations per device location. These results per device location are important, as constraints of various kinds, such as hardware, context of use and user activities, influence device location. We discuss this choice of device location by improving literature microgesture-based scenarios with haptic feedback or feedforward.