Learning and identifying haptic icons under workload

This work addresses the use of vibrotactile haptic feedback to transmit background information with variable intrusiveness, when recipients are engrossed in a primary visual and/or auditory task. We describe two studies designed to (a) perceptually optimize a set of vibrotactile "icons" and (b) evaluate users\´ ability to identify them in the presence of varying degrees of workload. Seven icons learned in approximately 3 minutes were each typically identified within 2.5 s and at 95% accuracy in the absence of workload.