Voice characteristics are known to influence people's perception of a speaker's professional abilities, often offering an unfair disadvantage to speakers in position of perceived vulnerability. By using a custom speech to haptics synthesis framework, this paper presents results from a user study investigating the influence of haptic speech enhancement on speaker's characteristic perception. A custom speech to haptic system is used to first replicate a study from Klofstad et al. examining how voice pitch influences perception of speaker strength, competence and trustworthiness, and second to explore the impact of multimodal stimulus presentation on these perceived characteristics. Our preliminary findings suggest that the perceived strength of a speaker with a higher voice pitch is enhanced, whereas the outcome is uncertain for competence. Perceived trustworthiness was not affected by the system at all. This work puts forward the potential positive effect that the use of haptic-enhanced communication system could have in social and professional communications, but also outlines its limitations.

In this paper we introduce Haptic Tutor, a wearable haptic system for triggering vibrations on limbs of a student drummer aimed to help develop multi-limb independence. The system uses portable, wireless vibrotactile devices to display haptic information on drummers' limbs. To asses the usefulness of the system, we analyse response time differences between stimuli and motor action (drum stroke). Our hypotheses are that the use of haptic stimuli will improve the temporal characteristics of performances, but also that the type of haptic stimuli will have an influence on performance results. To validate these hypotheses we conducted two experiments. The first one with participants randomly distributed in three groups, each group performing simple drumming lessons involving both hands under a given condition (no haptics, haptic pulse and haptic ramp). Results show clear improvement in strike accuracy for both haptic conditions, most clearly in the haptic ramp condition. Using these results, a second experiment was carried out in which 6 other participants were randomly divided into two groups (no haptics and haptic ramp conditions) and asked to perform a more complex lesson, this time involving three limbs (two arms and right foot). Results of both experiments show clear improvement on strike accuracy (reduced asynchrony), but a less important difference on strike precision (inter-onset-interval deviation) for the haptic condition. We finally report on participants subjective comments , discussing the limitations of the current prototype.

New technologies for printing sensors and actuators combine the flexibility of interface layouts of touchscreens with localized vibrotactile feedback, but their fabrication still requires industrial-grade facilities. Until these technologies become easily replicable, interaction designers need material for ideation. We propose an open-source hardware and software toolbox providing maker-grade tools for iterative design of vibrotactile widgets with industrial-grade printed sensors and actuators. Our hardware toolbox provides a mechanical structure to clamp and stretch printed sheets, and electronic boards to drive sensors and actuators. Our software toolbox expands the design space of haptic interaction techniques by reusing the wide palette of available audio processing algorithms to generate real-time vibrotactile signals. We validate our toolbox with the implementation of three exemplar interface elements with tactile feedback: buttons, sliders, touchpads.

To enable a transition towards rich vibrotactile feedback in applications and media content, a complete end-to-end system — from the design of the tactile experience all the way to the tactile stimulus reproduction — needs to be considered. Currently, most applications are at best limited to dull vibration patterns due to limited hard- and software implementations, while the design of ubiquitous platform-agnostic tactile stimuli remains challenging due to a lack of standardized protocols and tools for tactile design, storage, transport, and reproduction. This work proposes a conceptual framework, utilizing audio assets as a starting point for the design of vibrotactile stimuli, including ideas for a parametric tactile datamodel, and outlines challenges for a platform-agnostic stimuli reproduction. Finally, the benefits and shortcomings of a commercial and widespread vibrotactile API are investigated as an example for the current state of a complete end-to-end framework.

This paper presents an ongoing project aiming to bridge the academia-professional gap between soundscape researchers and Professionals of the Built Environment (PBEs) by providing urban soundscape design training, as well as new immersive tools to help them realize their goals. Through an extensive literature review and further requirements gathering with PBEs through workshops, conclusions were drawn that an immersive soundscape tool with integrated active learning modules would be an appropriate step towards arming PBEs with both the knowledge and tools to not only help prevent noise pollution and other problems, but to actually make cities sound better.

This paper reports the main findings of an in situ study involving the design and evaluation of a sound installation in a public square in Montreal exposed to construction noise. questionnaires were administered to public space users in July and August. We compare the responses collected in the presence or absence of the installation to investigate its effect on soundscape evaluations. The results show that the presence of the sound improved the sound-scape of the public square, particularly when the public square was exposed to construction noise.

Ubiquitous haptics draws from ubiquitous computing and aims to integrate haptics in everyday life to render interaction with technology seamless and intuitive. We describe an explorative design process that takes ubiquitous haptics as a starting point and aims to discover opportunities for haptics in a near future in which smart objects and haptic feedback are omnipresent. Through hands-on experimentation and brainstorming, we conceived a concept for the use of haptic feedback as part of a gestural language for interactions with connected devices, and more specifically with smart lights. The concept was developed and validated by exploring usage scenarios and experimenting with low-fidelity Wizard-of-Oz prototypes and high-fidelity prototype in virtual reality. This process led to the design of an intuitive and seamless user experience for smart lighting control based on a synergy between gestures and haptic feedback.

We demonstrate the production of custom interactive environments while comparing the type of resources that can be used for building oneself floor sensing arrays to be used as comparable touch responsive systems for interactive environments made either of organic or of synthetic resources. Who is gonna win the Polymers Battle?

Music performance involves continuous muscle activity of different body parts. Activity of more distal body segments which directly interact with the instrument usually relates to the actual production of sound. However, muscle activations of more proximal segments, including the trunk, might relate to the expressive content of the musical idea being communicated by the performer due to an embodiment process. This demo paper presents a work-in-progress implementation of an integrated set-up, the MappEMG, to produce a vibrotactile feedback based on surface electromyography data of pianists’ abdominal muscle activations. The main objective of the work is to make perceptible through haptic stimuli a rather non-visible dimension of pianists’ gestures (i.e. their ‘physiological tension’) linked to their expressive intentions in terms of musical tension, a key feature of musical structure in western tonal music. We envision to adapt the set-up presented to both live musical performances and pedagogical contexts.