Experimental system to investigate nonsequential presentation of tactile patterns

The paper presents details of an experimental system configuration to convert conventional text into nonsequential vibrational images. The purpose of this system is to investigate the capacity of the tactile sense to recognize text vibrational patterns presented to the skin in parallel or semi-parallel form. An array of vibrators is driven by pulses with amplitudes proportional to the amount of light in the corresponding spatial position of an image of text characters. The tactile patterns are produced by exciting the vibrators with 0.5 ms short pulses. Thus, making possible to reduce the power consumption and the required number of hardware components. The system allows to connect up to 8 arrays of 8 × 8 vibrators. A variable delay time for the onset of the excitation between arrays is provided to permit sequential, parallel or semi-parallel modes of presentation.