Haptic Enchanters: Attachable and Detachable Vibrotactile Modules and Their Advantages

This paper showcases attachable/detachable haptic modules, nicknamed haptic enchanters, by presenting their conceptual prototypes and quantifying their information transmission capacity. Haptic enchanters can be attached to ordinary devices and wearables to endow them with the ability of creating programmable haptic stimuli, thereby transforming them to effective haptic communication devices. In particular, our prototype enchanters are designed to localize vibrotactile stimulation to the neighborhood of attachment site, and this spatial isolation allows for effective spatiotemporal information delivery using multiple enchanters. We demonstrate that haptic enchanters enable very high capacity of information transfer (4.55–7.06 bits) for spatiotemporal vibration sequences rendered with two, three, and four enchanters. We also assert that haptic enchanters provide better user experiences by using location-enabled feedback in a game application than the whole-device feedback. These results instantiate the performance of haptic enchanters as effective and convenient communication accessories and their potential for applications.