Haptic grids allow for rich interactive experiences, producing motion through vibrotactile illusions. We introduce Tactile Animation, an approach that lets animators use a familiar, expressive interface to design haptics on grids, and Mango, a tactile animation tool.
- Tactile Animation by Direct Manipulation of Grid Displays. 2015. Oliver Schneider, Ali Israr, Karon MacLean. ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST) 2015. Charlotte, NC, USA.
Paper: PDF
Video: Short Extended
URL: http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2807470
Slides: PDF
Abstract
Chairs, wearables, and handhelds have become popular sites for spatial tactile display. Visual animators, already expert in using time and space to portray motion, could readily transfer their skills to produce rich haptic sensations if given the right tools. We introduce the tactile animation object, a directly manipulated phantom tactile sensation. This abstraction has two key benefits: 1) efficient, creative, iterative control of spatiotemporal sensations, and 2) the potential to support a variety of tactile grids, including sparse displays. We present Mango, an editing tool for animators, including its rendering pipeline and perceptually-optimized interpolation algorithm for sparse vibrotactile grids. In our evaluation, professional animators found it easy to create a variety of vibrotactile patterns, with both experts and novices preferring the tactile animation object over controlling actuators individually.
Short Video
Extended Video
Demo
We demonstrated Mango at UIST'15. Visitors created tactile animations on the left, which were rendered to an audience member on the right.