Tactile Glyphs for Palpation of Relationships

We propose the use of tactile glyphs to represent abstract information such as hierarchical relationships. A tactile glyph uses vibro-tactile feedback to the fingers and palm of the hand. By comparing two tactile glyphs, one for each hand, one can understand the relationships between the information that the glyphs represent. The use of tactile glyph comparison does not require remembering complex stimulus patterns; it only needs that some simple rules are learned. Although a limited number of stimuli can be provided to one hand, techniques for mapping hierarchical information to a pattern and using a sequence of tactile feedback enable the representation of relationships in a large hierarchy. Experimental evaluations were conducted to clarify the features of the tactile glyphs. The experimental evaluations suggested that the tactile glyphs can be used to represent hierarchical relationships and for palpation of relationships