A Wireless Tactile Communication System for Conveying U.S. Army Hand-Arm Signals

Abstract

Combat conditions place fearsome extremes on soldier senses, rendering many traditional visual and auditory informational pathways unusable for soldier communications. To circumvent these limitations, vibrotactile displays may offer environmental advantages (covert use in murky and noisy conditions) as well as human information processing advantages (an unimpeded sensory channel and potential resource pool). The demonstrated system uses wireless electronic communications to present exemplar Army arm and hand signals in a tactual form. Vibrotactors on an elasticized belt deliver vibrotactile patterns to the wearer's torso, with inputs originating from a hardened PDA running a custom software package. Benefits and limitations are discussed, as well as other potential applications and integrations with other information input sources.