Exploring Multimodal Watch-back Tactile Display using Wind and Vibration

A tactile display on the back of a smartwatch is an attractive output option; however, its channel capacity is limited owing to the small contact area. In order to expand the channel capacity, we considered using two perceptually distinct types of stimuli, wind and vibration, together on the same skin area. The result is a multimodal tactile display that combines wind and vibration to create “colored” tactile sensations on the wrist. As a first step toward this goal, we conducted in this study four user experiments with a wind-vibration tactile display to examine different ways of combining wind and vibration: Individual, Sequential, and Simultaneous. The results revealed the sequential combination of wind and vibration to exhibit the highest potential, with an information transfer capacity of 3.29 bits. In particular, the transition of tactile modality was perceived at an accuracy of 98.52%. The current results confirm the feasibility and potential of a multimodal tactile display combining wind and vibration.