by: Olivier Bau, Ivan Poupyrev, Ali Israr, and Chris Harrison
Authors
All authors research at Disney Research Pittsburg, in Pittsburg, PA. Bau received his PhD from a university in Paris.
Presentation Venue
"UIST '10 Proceedings of the 23nd annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology" as per the document specs from the ACM digital library, dl.acm.org. The presentation took place in New York City, NY, 2010.
Summary
TeslaTouch introduces a technology that uses a phenomenon discovered in the 50's called electrovibration to provide tactile feedback for users on interfaces. This paper introduces TeslaTouch, explains its studies, and analyzes pros and cons of electrovibration vs. mechanical vibrotactile feedback.
Hypothesis
As a new technology, Bau's main hypothesis is that electrovibration is a viable option for tactile feedback on interfaces and implements it as TeslaTouch.
Methods
TeslaTouch is set up with an understanding of a bunch of technical jargon that basically means small electric shocks are used to create a sensation similar to different surfaces that a finger might touch as it moves across the surface. Users were tested using the surface to determine thresholds for voltage perception, and other things such as apparent smoothness/stickiness of the surface.
Results
TeslaTouch was successfully created and tests suggested that users were successfully able to distinguish between their criteria of sensations. It was also discovered the users could feel quite low voltage which could serve for mobile device power conservation. It was observed that electrovibration tactile feedback had many advantages over mechanical vibrotactile feedback - chiefly coming from the fact that electrovibbration feedback requires no moving components.
Discussion
I never even considered this type of interface coming out... but now that I've read about it, I'm intrigued, vaguely think "duh" and would like to test it out myself. While I know that such feedback in my phone is not necessary by any means, I do believe it would have the "wow" factor that is missing from many new technologies and applications for my phone. It would be pretty awesome to be able to send a text that says, "here, it felt something like this." The limitation to a single moving finger is a bit of a let down, however. I understand that it is based on friction-imitation, so movement is necessary, but restricting it to a single finger just seems harsh. This certainly makes me wonder if we're going to start having more fake fruit that feels like real fruit in every way except perhaps weight (and maybe even in weight...).
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