Supporting Speeded Navigational Communication via Gesture-Controlled Vibrotactile Displays

Recent research has shown that haptic displays are particularly well-suited to communicating navigation information, but these displays are rarely evaluated in situations that require time-critical communications. The present study serves as the first proof of concept for “CHIAD”: a new haptic interaction system that allows fast and efficient communication of navigation information by supporting gesture-based encoding of navigational instructions and intuitive decoding of the instructions by mapping them to vibration presentations at different body locations. Participant pairs completed a speeded target-selection navigation task by utilizing three different interfaces: verbal instructions via two-way radio, vibrotactile signals activated by a laptop-based interface, and the CHIAD system. The results show the fastest and most accurate performance with the CHIAD system, suggesting two conclusions: vibrotactile signals are more effective than verbal interactions in supporting speeded communication of simple navigation instructions; and natural gesture methods support faster encoding of instructions.

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