The Body Surface as a Communication System: The State of the Art after 50 Years

Abstract

The suggestion that the body surface might be used as an additional means of presenting information to human-machine operators has been around in the literature for nearly 50 years. Although recent technological advances have made the possibility of using the body as a receptive surface much more realistic, the fundamental limitations on the human information processing of tactile stimuli presented across the body surface are, however, still largely unknown. This literature review provides an overview of studies that have attempted to use vibrotactile interfaces to convey information to human operators. The importance of investigating any possible central cognitive limitations (i.e., rather than the peripheral limitations, such as related to sensory masking, that were typically addressed in earlier research) on tactile processing for the most effective design of body interfaces is highlighted. The applicability of the constraints emerging from studies of tactile processing under conditions of unisensory (i.e., purely tactile) stimulus presentation, to more ecologically valid conditions of multisensory stimulation, is also discussed. Finally, the results obtained from recent studies of tactile information processing under conditions of multisensory stimulation are described, and their implications for haptic/tactile interface design elucidated. IntroductionWe chose to begin this paper with a quote from one of the first and foremost researchers to have systematically approached the problem of cutaneous communication using the body surface. The quote, dating from 1960, and the paper from which the quote was taken, nicely highlight the novel interest in the topic as well as the technological constraints limiting the study of tactile information processing across the body at the time that Frank Geldard was writing. What's more, the choice of the date for such a citation is by no means accidental, given that in 1960 a group of investigators conferred at Fort Knox, Kentucky in order to discuss the basic problems associated with any attempt to communicate through the skin (see Hawkes, 1960, for a summary of the papers presented at that symposium). Therefore, we believe that 1960 can, in some sense, be taken to represent the "symbolic" birth of the first extensive research in this field. The place of the meeting was by no means coincidental either, given the strategic importance at that time (and even today), of studying novel means of communication for both military and civilian purposes.Nearly 50 years later, technology has moved on a long way, and a new wave of interest has recently started to resurface regarding the theoretical and practical ad-

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