OmniVib: Towards Cross-body Spatiotemporal Vibrotactile Notifications for Mobile Phones

Previous works illustrated that one’s palm can reliably recognize 10 or more spatiotemporal vibrotactile patterns. However, recognition of the same patterns on other body parts has been unknown. In this paper, we investigate how users perceive spatiotemporal patterns on the arm, palm, thigh and waist. The results of the first two experiments indicated that precise recognition of either position or orientation is difficult across body parts. Nonetheless, users were able to distinguish whether two vibration pulses were from the same location when played in quick succession. Based on this finding, we designed eight spatiotemporal vibrotactile patterns and evaluated them in two additional experiments. The results showed that these patterns can be reliably recognized (>80%) across the four body parts both in the lab and in a more realistic context.