Ontological representation of tactile information for software development

The last years a growing body of research has been developed on tactile displays and interfaces, which can give physical form to digital information. In spite of the numerous tactile devices that have been constructed, the development of formal definition for tactile information still remains an open issue. In order for the software to better enhance the tactile information sensation, flow and perception and also drive tactile interfaces we need a formal representation of tactile information. The tactile information ontology proposed in this article analyzes the existing knowledge in tactile information domain, specifies the conceptual structure, and defines the processes that take part in the tactile information flow. Furthermore, the developed ontological representation encodes knowledge into computer understandable form and will allow the sharing and reuse of this knowledge by software tools. The proposed model will be used to identify how tactile displays can improve human-computer interaction, set the principles that are required to design effective user interfaces and assist the development of software for tactile displays. Along with the ontological model, a case study relative to the perception of roughness, generated by a tactile device, has been described.