Emulating Social Haptic Communication with Vibration patterns

Social Haptic Communication (SHC) is a tactile mode of communication used by persons with deafblindness [1]. It involves tracing shapes or other types of spatiotemporal patterns with the hand on the back or other body parts of another person. Tactile shapes can also be traced by sequentially switching vibration motors on and off [2]. Here we investigated whether SHC can be emulated using vibrotactile patterns. We performed three test and design sessions with SHC users with and without deafblindness. The outcome of these sessions indicates that the participants were in many cases able to immediately link these patterns to the SHC sign (haptice) that it was meant to emulate. Participants helped improving the set of vibration patterns.