Design and Validation of Pseudo-Force Haptic Device for Actual Walking

Pedestrian navigation systems on smartphones have become integral to modern society. However, a crucial problem in pedestrian navigation is that visual and/or auditory cues can distract situational awareness while walking, which may lead to serious consequences. To address this problem, various haptic navigation devices have been developed. Among these, a pseudo-force sensation elicited by asymmetric vibrations on the skin is considered a promising method owing to its intuitive directional cues. Nevertheless, pseudo-force sensation for pedestrian navigation has yet to be well validated in actual walking situations. Here, we propose an untethered pseudo-force haptic device for pedestrian navigation. Our device controls the direction of pseudo-force sensation by delivering asymmetric vibrations to the fingertips using a pair of vibrotactile actuators. Perceptual and navigation experiments were conducted to examine the effectiveness of the proposed pseudo-force navigation device. Our results suggest that pseudo-force navigation is effective during actual walking.