Analysis of different vibration patterns to guide blind people

Abstract

The literature indicates the best vibration positions and frequencies on the human body where tactile information is transmitted. However, there is a lack of knowledge about how to combine tactile stimuli for navigation. The aim of this study is to compare different vibration patterns outputted to blind people and to determine the most intuitive vibration patterns to indicate direction for navigation purposes through a tactile belt. The vibration patterns that stimulate the front side of the waist are preferred for indicating direction. Vibration patterns applied on the back side of the waist could be suitable for sending messages such as stop.

Investigation of Tactile Sensory System Configuration for Construction Hazard Perception

“…However, this study was limited to testing four obvious directions: front, back, left, and right, which might have resulted in better performance of the system. Other studies [50,51,52] demonstrated the capability of a system with eight vibration motors equally spaced around the waist, for assisting the navigation of visually impaired people. Marston et al [53,54] demonstrated the applicability of a vibrotactile system wearable on the wrist to assist navigation of visually impaired individuals.…”

“…While observing the interface of vibration motors used in the previously discussed navigation assistance systems, it was found that most of these studies [44,45,48,49,50,51,52] had their motors arranged around a waist belt at an equal spacing to assist in navigation. Few studies [56,57] used a 3 × 3 back-array arrangement of motors on the back of people to guide in navigation.…”

“…Apart from the studies to determine the feasibility of using a vibration-based system for navigation purposes, Durá-Gil et al [50] investigated different vibration patterns for effective directional information. Among the eight vibration motors placed at equal spacing around the waist, five motors at the front were used for indicating direction, such as continue straight and turn left/right at different angles.…”

Human-centered design of vibrotactile wearables for persons with a visual impairment

“…Orcam). However, only few studies have been done to test their effectiveness for people with visual impairments [41][42][43][44][45]. None of the mentioned applications were used by the participants in this study.…”

“…In recent years, there have been many developments applying different sensors, such as sonar, infrared, optical, and GPS. Additionally, the auditory [28,[30][31][32] and tactile [21,[33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44] modalities have been used to support PVIs to improve the ability of PVIs to navigate independently [10,29,45,46]. Despite these developments, only few of these systems have been commercialized and are widely used in the everyday life of PVIs [46].…”