Design and Implementation of a Semantic Information Expression Device Based on Vibrotactile Coding

Abstract

In recent years, research on new technologies for expressing and exchanging information through tactile vibration has been the focus of researches. In this paper, by choosing a suitable coding scheme and a vibrating motor arrangement, we designed a device to express semantic information through vibrotactile. Three types of experiments were designed to test the usability of the encoding scheme and the device. Firstly, the vibration intensity was experimented when designing the encoding scheme, and the results showed that the encoding scheme was better with Braille units of 0.2 and 0.3 vibration intensities. In addition, the learning experiment and sentence recognition accuracy experiment were carried out to verify the usability of the device. The learning experiment results show that subjects were able to memorize Braille characters with an accuracy more than 90%, and to recognize a Chinese character (consisting of two Braille cells) with an average of 90.8% accuracy. The sentence recognition accuracy test experiment results show that the average recognition rate of the three poems used for the test was 93.33%. The device can be used for semantic information expression and touch-reading of Braille, and it can realize the reading experience of paper Braille.