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An immersive theatre experience was designed to raise awareness and question perceptions of 'blindness', through enabling both sighted and blind members to experience a similar reality. A multimodal experience was created, comprising ambient sounds and narratives -heard through headphones -and an assortment of themed tactile objects, intended to be felt. In addition, audience members were each provided with a novel haptic device that was designed to enhance their discovery of a pitch-black space. An in the wild study of the cultural experience showed how blind and sighted audience members had different 'felt' experiences, but that neither was a lesser one. Furthermore, the haptic device was found to encourage enactive exploration and provide reassurance of the environment for both sighted and blind people, rather than acting simply as a navigation guide. We discuss the potential of using haptic feedback to create cultural experiences for both blind and sighted people; rethinking current utilitarian framing of it as assistive technology.

Flatland was an immersive 'in-the-wild' experimental theatre and technology project, undertaken with the goals of developing systems that could assist 'real-world' pedestrian navigation for both vision impaired (VI) and sighted individuals, while also exploring inclusive and equivalent cultural experiences for VI and sighted audiences. A novel shape-changing handheld haptic navigation device, the 'Animotus', was developed. The device has the ability to modify its form in the user's grasp to communicate heading and proximity to navigational targets. Flatland provided a unique opportunity to comparatively study the use of novel navigation devices with a large group of individuals (79 sighted, 15 VI) who were primarily attending a theatre production rather than an experimental study. In this paper we present our findings on comparing the navigation performance (measured in terms of efficiency, average pace and time facing targets) and opinions of VI and sighted users of the Animotus as they negotiated the 112m 2 production environment. Differences in navigation performance was non-significant across VI and sighted individuals and a similar range of opinions on device function and engagement spanned both groups. We believe more structured device familiarization, particularly for VI users, could improve performance and incorrect technology expectations (such as obstacle avoidance capability), which influenced overall opinion. This work is intended to aid the development of future inclusive technologies and cultural experiences.

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This paper presents a minimalistic handheld haptic interface designed to provide pedestrian navigation assistance via the intuitive and unobtrusive stimulus of shapechanging. The new device, named the Haptic Taco, explores a novel region of robotic interfaces which we believe to have benefits over other communication methods. In previous work, we demonstrated the use of a 2DOF shape changing interface for navigation without the use of sight. In this paper we seek to explore the potential of minimal 1DOF interfaces, whose simplicity may increase intuitiveness and performance despite conveying less information. The Haptic Taco utilizes the same 'variable volume' concept as a previous device, the Haptic Lotus (2010), but with reduced body compliance and higher force exertion capability. Both devices modulate their perceived volume in relation to proximity to a navigational target (a destination or waypoint). As users walk within an environment, they also attempt to minimize the device volume, finding targets via an embodied 'steepest descent' method. Experimental comparison of the Lotus and Taco in a targetfinding study revealed that the Taco interface increased motion path efficiency by 24% over the Lotus, to 47% average efficiency. This result is highly comparable to the mean motion efficiency of 43.6-48% observed in prior experiments with the 2DOF shape-changing interface, the Animotus. The findings indicate the potential for minimalistic interfaces in this emerging field.