VibraForge: A Scalable Prototyping Toolkit For Creating Spatialized Vibrotactile Feedback Systems

TL;DR

VibraForge is an open-source, scalable toolkit supporting up to 128 vibrotactile actuators, enabling complex spatialized tactile feedback for diverse applications with high control and ease of use.

Contribution

It introduces a modular, chain-connected vibrotactile system with a GUI editor, overcoming scalability limitations of existing haptic toolkits.

Findings

Reliable reproduction of audio waveforms with low latency

Effective control of vibration intensity and frequency

Successful case studies in VR, drone teleoperation, and phonemic display

Abstract

Spatialized vibrotactile feedback systems deliver tactile information by placing multiple vibrotactile actuators on the body. As increasing numbers of actuators are required to adequately convey information in complicated applications, haptic designers find it difficult to create such systems due to limited scalability of existing toolkits. We propose VibraForge, an open-source vibrotactile toolkit that supports up to 128 vibrotactile actuators. Each actuator is encapsulated within a self-contained vibration unit and driven by its own microcontroller. By leveraging a chain-connection method, each unit receives independent vibration commands from a control unit, with fine-grained control over intensity and frequency. We also designed a GUI Editor to expedite the authoring of spatial vibrotactile patterns. Technical evaluation showed that vibration units reliably reproduced audio waveforms with low-latency and high-bandwidth data communication. Case studies of a phonemic tactile display, virtual reality fitness training, and drone teleoperation demonstrated the potential usage of VibraForge within different domains. A usability study with non-expert users highlighted the low technical barrier and customizability of the toolkit.