Modular Haptic Feedback for Rapid Prototyping of Tactile Displays

This work presents the foundations of a novel haptic toolkit, consisting of a set of modules that seeks to enable designers to easily and quickly produce new tactile prototypes. The modules are re-attachable, wearable, wireless, customizable, and can be placed on different parts of the body. This paper first discusses a series of design decisions that were made when producing these modules. The paper then presents a set of five modules that were created using the decided upon design techniques. The five haptic modules presented produce the three most common tactile feedback modalities: vibrotactile, skin-stretch, and probing. Each module haptic cue parameters can be customized and controlled wirelessly through an off- board computer. The modules can be used either in isolation or in groups for haptic sketching to rapidly iterate through tactile displays.