Development and evaluation of tactile presentation device for Japanese Katakana cognitive experiment

The Braille system is a method that is widely used by blind people to read and write. Braille is one of the few writing systems where tactile perception is used. Tactile display devices stimulate the skin to generate these sensations of contact. Then, human can perceived shape on their skin. However, one important issue of Braille is that that is difficult to learn, especially for older. Therefore, we designed tactile Japanese Katakana presentation device to investigate the characteristics of tactile Katakana perception in present study. Katakana is a syllabic writing system in which each symbol represents a syllable. All of Japanese Katakana are characterized by short, straight strokes and angular corners, and are the simplest of the Japanese scripts. We used the plastic material to build the device and ultrasonic motors to deliver the tactile Katakana patterns. The system consists of a primary device, a personal computer, a motor controller and an electronic amplifier unit connected to the output of the force sensor. Ten healthy right-handed male volunteers (native Japanese speakers) consented to participate in the evaluation experiment. Subjects were asked to touch each of 46 characters and verbally identify what the katakana is. These results of evaluation experiment suggested that the system can serve as a tactile presentation device for cognitive experiment.