Transmission of Acoustic Information of Percussion Instruments through Tactile Sensation Using Air-Jet Stimulation for Hearing Impaired Person

Abstract

We are trying to transfer acoustic information to hearing impaired persons through tactile sensation using air-jet stimuli. We focused on psychological tonal impressions given when hearing various sounds, and examined whether these impressions could be given by air-jet stimuli. In order to replace percussion sounds with air-jets, we connected the acoustic characteristics to the parameters of the air-jet stimuli. Relationships between the acoustic characteristics of percussion instruments and the physical characteristics of air-jets have been found by analysis of psychological impressions given when hearing percussion instrument sounds and perceiving air-jet stimuli. As a result, transmitting musical information was possible.

VacuumTouch

“…Most previous work presents haptic interfaces that provide tactile or repulsive force sensation via jets of air [2,10,16,31]. For example, Suzuki and Kobayashi established a three dimensional visual and haptic interactive system with 100 air-jet nozzles, where the user interacts with a stereoscopic image with a stick [31].…”