Modelling Perceptual Elements of Music in a Vibrotactile Display for Deaf Users: A Field Study

Vibrotactile Display of Music on the Human Back

“…Results from this study are intended to contribute to future work that will investigate the use of a vibrotactile display by deaf and hard of hearing to support music listening [16], [4], [17].…”

“…This research directly contributes to the development of the model human cochlea (MHC), a sensory substitution system that aims to make music accessible as tactile sensations by presenting many different ranges of the signal as unique frequency bands to the body, effectively moving towards using the skin as a potential hearing organ [4]. Because we are using voice coils as devices that translate music into tactile vibrations, we wanted to determine if this approach is as effective at conveying frequency signals as the singlepoint contactors used in previous experiments.…”

“…Our research explores the translation of music into vibrotactile sensations by using multiple points of contact to represent independent bands of frequencies, towards modelling the basic functionality of the human cochlea and its frequency detection mechanism on the skin [4]. Some important issues that have yet to be considered include the identification of precise features of sound that can best be detected on the body, determining the optimal number of points of vibration that the skin can simultaneously detect, what kinds of tactile devices can maximize the amount of sound information that can be translated into physical vibrations, and whether or not we can learn to identify vibrations as the specific sound bites they represent over prolonged exposure to this type of vibrotacile stimuli.…”

How Does It Feel Like? An Exploratory Study of a Prototype System to Convey Emotion through Haptic Wearable Devices

“…Film is a multimodal form of entertainment that blends together audio and visual stimuli to tell a story and create an emotional experience for those watching it. Both the audio and the visual elements are essential in creating this experience, and some argued that these should be accessible to everyone enjoying this form of entertainment, but how for deaf movie lovers even though captioning or sign language can make speech more accessible, music and background noises are not included in subtitles [7]. Also, in silent movies (with all music and no words) music is the main element for communicating emotions, so those not able to hear are left out.…”

“…Two previous studies in this field [7]- [14] presented the design of a vibrating haptic chair as a solution to the enhancement of musical experience for the deaf, but this study proposes instead the design of an affordable wearable haptic device that will give the user freedom of movement and enhance their musical experience while watching a movie. This study used the review on measures, capabilities and limitations of tactile sensitivity for the human body in [13] as guidance for developing a wearable tactile interface suitable for this experiment.…”