Vibration Soccer: Tactile Rendering of Football Game on Mobiles

Vibrotactile sensations to sight and sound cues on mobile handsets make content more realistic, fun and operation more intuitive. In this paper, we propose a new method of rendering live football game on mobile phones by vibration, which offers the better and more entertaining user communications and/or interaction by focusing on the vibrotactile functionality of the mobile. The mobile phone is "synchronized" with the ball in the real-time football game. By holding the phone, users will be able to experience dynamic movements of the ball, to know attacking directions and which team is leading the attack. We examine the possible vibrotactile communication using mobile vibration as a medium alone. The user studies are performed on 36-adult subjects and results are discussed. Finally, the potentials of the tactile channel communications are demonstrated.