Future Navigation May Let You 'Feel' Your Way Around



Vibrations from a wearable GPS device would give directions with a pattern of pulses that the wearer would feel. Not only does this eliminate the need for maps — which are, ultimately, distracting to drivers — but it would bypass the two most common ways devices display information to accommodate those who have visual or auditory impairments.

The idea comes from Lynette Jones, a senior research scientist in MIT's Department of Mechanical Engineering. She decided to study how sensitive skin is to vibrations, where people are most sensitive and how touch is perceived.

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To get the data she wanted, Jones designed a belt that contained small motors similar to those that cause a cell phone to vibrate and a set of sensors that tracked the vibrations as they traveled across a person's skin. She tested the sensors on the palm of the hand, the forearm and the thigh.

Jones found that people actually feel the "tickling" further away than the vibrations actually transmit. On average, the "ripples" in the skin generated by the motors died down no more than eight millimeters in any direction. But the people in the study felt the motors as much as three times further away.

Another twist was the motors to which people were more sensitive. They felt the vibrations from the motors at the edges more intensely than those in the center of the device.

Skin had some noteworthy effects on the vibrating motors. Because skin is relatively soft but variably so throughout the body, vibrations faded out more or less quickly depending on their frequency and where on the body the scientists were looking.

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Such information on skin responsiveness could help designers determine the best configuration of motors, depending where on the skin a device would be worn. And vibrations could do more than give directions. For example, while a buzz on the left may be a signal to turn that way, one that starts out softly and increases in intensity and frequency could be a signal to slow down, or a way to tell a blind person that there's an obstacle ahead.

Image courtesy of Lynette Jones, MIT

This article originally published at Discovery News here

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