Examining Change Sensitivity to Vibrotactile Beats in a Hand-Held Touchscreen Device

Abstract

While recent research has employed vibrotactile feedback as a means of communication, one novel form of vibrotactile feedback involves the generation of “beats”. They are amplitude-modulated vibratory signals that can be created by sending multiple sinusoidal signals at dissonant frequencies (Lim, Kyung, & Kwon, 2012; Yang et al., 2014). The resulting perception of a rising-and-falling amplitude signal (a single “beat”), can be characterized per unit time as beat frequency, which is a function of the difference between the two input signal frequencies. Although vibrotactile beat cues have potentials in better supporting multitasking contexts that are visually demanding, the fundamental psychophysical characteristics of absolute and difference sensitivities have not been well-studied. To build on the promising but sparse findings involving the application of vibrotactile beats, it is important to define the limits of human perceptual ability to differentiate vibrotactile beats at distinct beat frequencies.