Improving Perception Accuracy with Multi-sensory Haptic Cue Delivery

This paper presents a novel, wearable, and multi-sensory haptic feedback system intended to support the transmission of large sets of haptic cues that are accurately perceived by the human user. Previous devices have focused on the optimization of haptic cue transmission using a single modality and have typically employed arrays of haptic tactile actuators to maximize information throughput to a user. However, when large cue sets are to be transmitted, perceptual interference between transmitted cues can decrease the efficacy of single-sensory systems. Therefore, we present MISSIVE (Multi-sensory Interface of Stretch, Squeeze, and Integrated Vibration Elements), a wearable system that conveys multi-sensory haptic cues to the user’s upper arm, allowing for increased perceptual accuracy compared to a single-sensory vibrotactile array of a comparable size, conveying the same number of cues. Our multi-sensory haptic cues are comprised of concurrently rendered, yet perceptually distinct elements: radial squeeze, lateral skin stretch, and localized cutaneous vibration. Our experiments demonstrate that our approach can increase perceptual accuracy compared to a single-sensory vibrotactile system of comparable size and that users prefer MISSIVE.