Tactile Echoes: A New AR Systems Can Adapt to Sight, Sound and Touch

With the Tactile Echoes, users can touch and experience virtual objects

With the advancement of technology, AR has been gaining momentum. A new augmented reality system called Tactile Echoes can provide users to experience sounds and could be used for a wide range of entertainment, gaming, and research purposes.

This new AR system does not require any equipment between the user's fingertips and the contact surface. The users can enjoy the real sensation of their environment with the haptic, visual and auditory augmented enhancements. Anzu Kawazoe, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California and Santa Barbara designed the Tactile Echoes.

"Tactile Echoes is possibly the first programmable system for haptic augmented reality that allows its users to freely touch physical objects or surface augmented with multimodal digital feedback using their hands", says Anzu Kawazoe.

This is possible by placing a sensor on top of the user's fingernail that can detect the vibrations that are naturally produced by the fingers as it torches the surface. Then these processed signals caught through vibrations are translated into programmed sounds. Since the vibrational patterns of our fingers change depending upon what surface we touch or the intensity applied, different tactile feedback and sounds can be played.

Kawazoe in this context explains, "We were motivated by the idea of being able to almost magically augment any ordinary object or surface, such as a simple wooden table, with lively haptic and effects that playfully respond to how or where we touch".

The team of Kawazoe went a step ahead and integrated the wearable device with a virtual environment designed by a VR or AR headset. This gives an opportunity for users to touch virtual objects in their real environment, and experience the graphic, sounds, and haptic feedback.

A team of researchers tested Tactile Echoes by a series of experiments that are described in the study which was published on May 26 in IEEE Transactions on Haptics. The users reported that the Tactile Echoes feedback was greatly enhanced by the responsiveness and the level of engagement playing games.

"We are thinking that this tactile masking effect is working on the Tactile Echoes system. Specifically, time-delayed tactile feedback is perceived as stronger. We are preparing for new experiments to investigate these effects and results to improve the Tactile Echoes system", said Kawazoe.