An Oral Tactile Interface: Design and Development

While tactile displays have been designed for the fingertip and other body locations of relatively larger area, the potential of the oral cavity for housing a tactile interface is largely unexplored. Nevertheless, with hidden, silent, and hand-free operation, an oral tactile interface may provide an innovative approach for information transmission or human-machine interaction by taking advantage of the high sensitivity of the oral structures. A two-way oral tactile interface is envisioned as a retainerlike mouthpiece that allows one not only to send out commands and controls but also to receive messages via the tactile channel. As a key component for such a tactile interface, a flexible electrotactile display with 7 x 7 dome-shaped tactors has been designed and fabricated with thin film technology and an electroplating process. An oral tactile interface prototype is then made by mounting the tactor array on top of a mouth impression for tactile presentation to the roof of the mouth and by attaching a tongue-operated keypad at the bottom. An interfacing system is implemented to control the tactor array and interact with the tongue touch keypad. The system is programmed to simulate a scenario of navigation guidance via the oral tactile interface. It is demonstrated that a user may receive simple geospatial cues by sensing tactile patterns on the oral display and manipulate a soldier image on the computer screen with the tongue-operated keypad. Psychophysical experiments have been performed on six human subjects to study the thresholds and spatial sensitivity of the roof of the mouth on static and dynamic tactile patterns and its performance in identifying geospatial cues. Results indicate that identification on left or right moving patterns is highly accurate while errors on forward or backward moving patterns vary considerably among subjects.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Electrical Engineering

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2015

Author dc:creator

• Tang, Hui

Contributors dc:contributor

• David J. Beebe

• Engineering, Electronics and Electrical

Language dc:language

eng

Identifier

(MiAaPQ)AAI9990157

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/81359