An Interactive Tool for Simulating Mid-Air Ultrasound Tactons on the Skin

TL;DR

This paper introduces an interactive simulation tool for designing mid-air ultrasound tactile patterns, enabling better prediction of tactile effects and aiding haptic designers in creating contactless tactile interfaces.

Contribution

It presents a novel interactive simulation tool with adjustable parameters to predict ultrasound-induced tactile sensations, validated through experimental measurements.

Findings

Simulation results closely match actual ultrasound vibrations.

The tool effectively predicts tactile patterns across different ultrasound techniques.

Insights for future improvements in ultrasound haptic simulation.

Abstract

Mid-air ultrasound haptic technology offers a myriad of temporal and spatial parameters for contactless haptic design. Yet, predicting how these parameters interact to render an ultrasound signal is difficult before testing them on a mid-air ultrasound haptic device. Thus, haptic designers often use a trial-and-error process with different parameter combinations to obtain desired tactile patterns (i.e., Tactons) for user applications. We propose an interactive tool with five temporal and three spatiotemporal design parameters that can simulate the temporal and spectral properties of stimulation at specific skin points. As a preliminary verification, we measured vibrations induced from the ultrasound Tactons varying on one temporal and two spatiotemporal parameters. The measurements and simulation showed similar results for three different ultrasound rendering techniques, suggesting the efficacy of the simulation tool. We present key insights from the simulation and discuss future directions for enhancing the capabilities of simulations.