GaitGuide: A Wearable Device for Vibrotactile Motion Guidance

2024

Miscellaneous

hi

Wearable vibrotactile devices can provide salient sensations that attract the user's attention or guide them to change. The future integration of such feedback into medical or consumer devices would benefit from understanding how vibrotactile cues vary in amplitude and perceived strength across the heterogeneity of human skin. Here, we developed an adhesive vibrotactile device (the GaitGuide) that uses two individually mounted linear resonant actuators to deliver directional motion guidance. By measuring the mechanical vibrations of the actuators via small on-board accelerometers, we compared vibration amplitudes and perceived signal strength across 20 subjects at five signal voltages and four sites around the shank. Vibrations were consistently smallest in amplitude—but perceived to be strongest—at the site located over the tibia. We created a fourth-order linear dynamic model to capture differences in tissue properties across subjects and sites via optimized stiffness and damping parameters. The anterior site had significantly higher skin stiffness and damping; these values also correlate with subject-specific body-fat percentages. Surprisingly, our study shows that the perception of vibrotactile stimuli does not solely depend on the vibration magnitude delivered to the skin. These findings also help to explain the clinical practice of evaluating vibrotactile sensitivity over a bony prominence.

@misc{Rokhmanova24-ICRAWS-GaitGuide,
  title = {Gait{G}uide: A Wearable Device for Vibrotactile Motion Guidance},
  author = {Rokhmanova, Nataliya and Martus, Julian and Faulkner, Robert and Fiene, Jonathan and Kuchenbecker, Katherine J.},
  howpublished = {Workshop paper (3 pages) presented at the ICRA Workshop on Advancing Wearable Devices and Applications Through Novel Design, Sensing, Actuation, and AI},
  address = {Yokohama, Japan},
  month = may,
  year = {2024},
  doi = {},
  month_numeric = {5}
}