Human Information. A study of Tactile Impressions from Vibration Stimuli. Various Status Transmission Method Based on Vibration for Deaf/Blind and Visually Impaired Persons.

We have been making progressing in the research and development of an integrated receiving terminal to enable the visually disabled and those with both visual and auditory disabilities to receive character information from data broadcasts and to communicate non-verbally via telephone. Tactile stimuli from the terminal, such as vibrations, must accurately convey to the user the response to a user input and the status of the communication on the telephone line as well as character data. In this report, to elucidate the requirements of tactile stimuli for accurate reception and intuitive learning of status messages, we discuss our investigation of the conditions under which vibration stimuli are distinguishable and under which condition they appear to convey the desired sensuous impression. We show that by using vibration stimuli matched to the user' s impression of various states of the receiver, such information can be conveyed intuitively and with little learning effort required of the user.