Vibrotactile Feedback for Vertical 2D Space Exploration
This addresses the challenge for visually impaired people in accurately positioning objects during tasks like shopping, though it is incremental as it builds on existing vibrotactile feedback methods.
The paper tackled the problem of helping visually impaired users locate objects in a 2D vertical plane by developing a vibrotactile wristband prototype that uses spatiotemporal patterns. A pilot study with twelve blindfolded sighted subjects demonstrated that the design, which discretizes space into a 7x7 matrix with discrete vertical and continuous horizontal patterns, was intuitive and effective.
Visually impaired people encounter many challenges in their everyday life, especially when it comes to navigating and representing space. The issue of shopping is addressed mostly on the level of navigation and product detection, but conveying clues about the object position to the user is rarely implemented. This work presents a prototype of vibrotactile wristband using spatiotemporal patterns to help visually impaired users reach an object in the 2D plane in front of them. A pilot study on twelve blindfolded sighted subjects showed that discretizing space in a seven by seven targets matrix and conveying clues with a discrete pattern on the vertical axis and a continuous pattern on the horizontal axis is an intuitive and effective design.