Sound-Specific Vibration Interface: Its Performance of Tactile Effects and Applications

The tactile effects of a sound-specific vibration interface is presented in this paper. The sound-specific vibration interface generates a vibration according to a sound stream using 16 oscillators arranged in 4 times 4 array. By setting time frame, we were able to generate various patterns of vibrations. So, the main purpose of this paper is to analyze the effectiveness the sound- specific vibration interface. We first analyze the immersiveness of the vibration depending on the tone of sound. Second, different parts of body were evaluated to find the most suitable part of body for our sound-specific vibration interface. Next, we also assess the various patterns of vibration using four patterns for a gun-shot. In addition, we also compare the results of the vibration device with those of two other vibration interfaces: a vibrating mouse and a vibrating head-set. In the experiment, participants listened to music and played a shooting game, wearing our sound-specific vibration interface. The experiments on different patterns of vibrations lead us to conclude that a certain vibration pattern is more effective than others and our vibrations interface is more effective than other vibrating devices, especially it works best when being attached to shoulders.