Exploring the Emergent Perception of Haptic Beats from Paired Vibrotactile Presentation

Abstract

Haptic beats, an analogous presentation to auditory beats, can be generated when a vibrotactile actuator is driven by a signal that contains two different activation frequencies. In contrast to a combined signal stimulating one location, this study explored to what extent haptic beats can be perceived as an emergent property when separate body locations are stimulated at two different frequencies. Consistent with previous findings, haptic beats were reliably perceived with paired presentations on the same fingertip; previously-unexplored locations on the palm, wrist, and elbow also supported the perception of beats. However, haptic beats were not perceived when stimuli were presented to distant locations, such as on different hands, suggesting that haptic beats most likely involve a localized mechanical integration rather than neural integration. These results have implications for the design of complex haptic displays for various domains, such as driving, navigation, medicine, and immersive virtual reality.

Evaluation of the Efficacy of Musical Vibroacupuncture in Pain Relief: A Randomized Controlled Pilot Study

“…As predicted, skin vibration employing multiple frequencies had a unique and significant impact on both pain perception (Table 1) and pain tolerance (Table 2) when compared to no skin vibration (baseline), which was not the case for either VA or SP. Given that pain is a complex phenomenon promoted by a network of neurons (48) generating neural oscillations in different brain areas and frequencies (49), one possible explanation for the significant results in MVA when compared to baseline and SP is that the differences between frequencies generate beats, which might increase the effect of entrainment of the oscillatory activity in the brain rhythms (50).…”

Development of an Electrostatic Beat Module for Various Tactile Sensations in Touch Screen Devices

“…There have been a few research works for creating beat vibration [17][18][19][20][21]. S.C. Lim et al developed a pin-array tactile device and generated haptic beats by providing two pins with slightly different sinusoidal operation frequencies [17].…”

“…S.C. Lim et al developed a pin-array tactile device and generated haptic beats by providing two pins with slightly different sinusoidal operation frequencies [17]. S. Yang et al created haptic beats using two vibrotactile actuators and investigated users' ability to distinguish emergent haptic beats from pairs of pure vibration presentations as a function of body location and frequency differences [18]. P. Tranchant et al developed a tactile module for generating beat and they investigated beat synchronization to vibrotactile electronic dance music in hearing and deaf people [19].…”

Investigating Redundant Multimodal Speedometer Displays for Supporting Concurrent Lane and Speed Tracking

“…Because it was important for this study to support processing one's relative speed (faster or slower, and by how much, compared to a target speed), multiple pitches/frequencies were combined into a single signal to relay both the target speed and current speed. This generated an emergent perception of a "beat pattern" (e.g., Yang, Tippey, & Ferris, 2014). This can be observed when tuning a stringed musical instrument, adjusting string tension to change its pitch, and comparing it to a reference pitch played via a separate source.…”