BodyElectric
In BodyElectric, we will develop a radical new form of haptics using electrical stimulation of the skin to transform our ability to incorporate tactile feedback into everyday products, to create richer interactive experiences, with lower environmental cost.
Tactile haptics is a key feature of many devices, from phones to in-car user interfaces, significantly improving usability and user experience. However, touch is often limited to vibration. Vibration actuators are bulky, low bandwidth, use non-sustainable materials, and only evoke a very limited set of sensations. This means we cannot make full use of our powerful touch sense and limits the applications of haptics. Electrotactile stimulation is the only effective solution for adding tactile displays to flexible devices with different geometries, at a low cost, power consumption and complexity. However, there are 4 key challenges that must be addressed:
- Perception – Knowledge of how electrical stimulation is perceived is limited; we have no clear basis on which to design comfortable, safe and effective stimuli
- Electrode Design – There are no sustainable electrodes, printable on to the surfaces of everyday devices to deliver stimulation
- Impedance Changes - Skin impedance and sensitivity vary over the body and over time; the same level of stimulation could become painful (or imperceptible) if the user sweats or moves their body
- Interaction Design - Little is known about how to design effectively using electrotactile haptics and there are no tools to help
Our vision to solve these problems requires ground-breaking work at the intersection of HCI, psychology and biomedical engineering to:
- Conduct fundamental studies in the perception of electrotactile stimulation
- Engineer sustainable electrode hardware and closed-loop impedance management for personalized feedback
- Create and validate new electrotactile and multimodal interactions
- Evaluate and demonstrate the practical effectiveness of electrotactile haptics in real world use