We are developing a wearable and modular device allowing users to perceive and respond to spatial information using haptic cues in an intuitive and unobtrusive way.
The system is composed of an array of “optical-hair modules“, each of which senses range information and transduces it as an appropriate vibro-tactile cue on the skin directly beneath it (the module can be embedded on clothes or strapped to body parts).
An analogy for our artificial sensory system in the animal world would be the cellular cilia, insect antennae, as well as the specialized sensory hairs of mammalian whiskers. In the future, this modular interface may cover precise skin regions or be distributed in over the entire body surface and then function as a double-skin with enhanced and tunable sensing capabilities.
We speculate that for a particular category of tasks (such as clear path finding and collision avoidance), the efficiency of this type of sensory transduction may be greater than what can be expected from more classical vision-to-tactile substitution systems.
Among the targeted applications of this interface are visual prosthetics for the blind, augmentation of spatial awareness in hazardous working environments, as well as enhanced obstacle awareness for car drivers (in this case the extended-skin sensors may cover the surface of the car).
In a word, what we are proposing here is to build artificial, wearable, light-based hairs or antennae. The actual hair stem will be an invisible, steerable laser beam. In the near future, we may be able to create on-chip, skin-implantable whiskers using MOEMS technology. Results in a similar direction have been already achieved in the framework of the smart laser scanner project in our lab.
Our first prototype (in the shape of a haptic headband) uses of-the-shelf components (arduino microcontroller and sharp IR rangefinders), and provides the wearer with 360 degrees of spatial awareness. It had very positive reviews in our proof-of-principle experiments, including a test on fifthy real blind people.
Proof of principle demo of the haptic radar interface.
Prototype “HaptiKar” for Laval Virtual (RC car fitted with 6 rangefinders,
bluetooth connection for control and feedback, 6 motor vibrator headband,
accelerometer based pad controller, wireless video feedback).
Artificial optical cat’s whiskers on a mask with rangefinders,
vibrators and leds to “feel” the surrounding like a cat, and to do sounds (bluetooth).
More information:
Haptic Radar – Ishikawa Watanabe Laboratory
Haptic Radar (long page) – Ishikawa Watanabe Laboratory
Augmenting spatial awareness with Haptic Radar