Pinching Tactile Display: End-to-End Vibration Transmission for Fabric Tactile Sensation

Author

Kitagishi, Takekazu and Zhang, Qing and Rekimoto, Jun

Abstract

Transmitting fabric tactile sensation is difficult because of fabric’s complex properties: softness, delicacy, and a relatively uniform surface texture. We propose Pinching Tactile Display (PTD), a conductive fabric system that enables end-to-end transmission of vibration signals measured from fabric. In a user study, we found that perceived roughness can be modulated within 2.1–3.0 on a Likert scale (suggestively comparable to fine-textile differences), and that this modulation arises from voltage-driven bumpiness and frequency-driven stickiness, with largely additive effects. We also found a clear correlation between input vibration signals and finger vibrations, demonstrating that input vibrations are reliably transmitted to the user’s finger. These results validate the system as a viable approach for end-to-end fabric tactile transmission and point to potential applications such as remote fabric exploration, VR, and fashion e-commerce.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1145/3772363.3799072